


Cold War Apocalypse (in through the out door)

by trailsofpaper



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Dean/Cas Big Bang (Supernatural), Dean/Cas Big Bang 2020 (Supernatural), Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:21:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 54,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27189250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trailsofpaper/pseuds/trailsofpaper
Summary: Dean Winchester's father raised him and his brother Sam to hunt the things that go bump in the night, all over the United States and under the threat of the Cold War. When John Winchester dies at the hand of a demon in 1984, Sam and Dean are reunited after four years, and somehow, this is where it all starts. It ends with the apocalypse, but in between there are demon deals, cigarettes and shotguns, and things Dean didn't think existed. Like angels and true love.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 32
Kudos: 83
Collections: DCBB 2020





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The latter half of the fic title is the last Led Zeppelin album and the chapter names are, predictably, Led Zeppelin song titles. I will NOT write an essay about how Dean's music taste, in this setting, is rebellious rather than reactionary. That's what this fic is about.  
>   
> I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the impetus for this entire fic was a [tumblr post](https://trailsofpaper.tumblr.com/post/618205940464975872/outpastthemoat-twenty-years-from-now-i-am-going) about a Supernatural reboot set in the 80s. The more I thought about it the more it made sense: smartphones have absolutely no place in Supernatural, and so I signed up for the Dean/Cas big bang 2020 the day before the author signups closed and wrote my own version of the story (or at least the first five seasons) in two months.  
>   
> Firstly, thanks to @salfarn and @laufarn for keeping my work on this fic secret and safe, and for being the cheerleading team I needed every step of the way. Literally this would not exist with your encouragement; thank you.  
>   
> Secondly, thanks to @pursuingsunshine for once more making me make the most of a story, even when I was trying to take shortcuts. Your betareading is beyond valuable, and this fic is so much better for your involvement. The commas are all my own fault.  
>   
> Thirdly, many thanks to Misti, who is a fantastic artist and whose traditional work is a joy to behold! You can find the art masterpost [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27407671).  
>   
> If you want mood music while reading, I have compiled a [spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32h3iybCkJmA0TYQxrDYgw?si=OCuia5QoSXeFiXzl8j4FKg) (or you can see the tracklist on my tumblr [here](https://trailsofpaper.tumblr.com/post/633979712033718272/cold-war-apocalypse-in-through-the-out-door-the))

**1984**

* * *

For four years, Sam Winchester had nursed the hope that life at Stanford would make him forget the things he took for granted growing up. But four years of living on his own and worrying about things that normal people worried about, like deadlines, and being able to afford drinks outside happy hour, and what the Reagan administration was doing in the Middle East, couldn't scrub off a lifetime of sleeping with your fingers curled around a knife under your pillow.

Four years, and waking up from a nightmare to strange noises in your apartment sent the same surge of adrenaline flooding through him, made him get up quietly and advance on the dark figure he could make out against the living room window, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Without making a sound, he cast about for anything to use as a weapon: his hand closed around a vase, and he sent his roommate a silent apology before he swung it at the figure.

The next thing Sam knew, his forearm was gripped, his legs were swiped out from under him, and he was pinned to the floor with the vase sliding over the cheap linoleum, leaving a trail of water and flowers in its wake.

"Whoah, whoa, easy there, homeboy," said the figure pinning him, and with a start Sam realized he recognized the voice and the familiar, teasing lilt of it.

"Dean?" Sam said, and he wrapped his legs around his attacker's and heaved with enough force so that he managed to reverse their positions, slamming him to the floor instead.

"Alright, alright!" He sounded a little choked, what with Sam's forearm pressed to his throat, blinking rapidly and tapping his fingers against Sam's shoulder. "What's it you say out here? Hang ten?"

Sam scoffed and let up the pressure, just a little. His own brother was grinning up at him, eyes bright in the gloom of the apartment.

"I'm not a surfer," Sam said and shifted off him to get to his feet. Dean didn't take his proffered hand when he heaved himself up, dusting off his knees.

"Could've fooled me, with that hair," he said and pulled a hand through his own hair, short and spiky, with an air of studied indifference. 

Sam gave another huff and looked him over. His brother was built steady, with Sam having grown past him in length at fifteen, much to his older brother's chagrin. From what Sam could make out in the half-light of the apartment, by the cuff of his folded shirt, Dean had added a couple of protective sigils to the sleeves of tattoos snaking down his arms, but otherwise he didn't look a day older than when Sam had last seen him. Four years ago.

Dean seemed content to only grin at him, so Sam asked,"What are you doing here, Dean?"

The change on his brother's face was instant. The smile slipped off like it had never been there, and Sam didn't know that he'd ever seen him so serious. That, more than anything else, made Sam's mouth dry with some horrible sense of foreboding. 

Dean swallowed. "Dad's dead," he said, and his voice broke on the second word. Sam blinked. John Winchester couldn't be dead, John Winchester made other things dead.

"Jesus," Sam said. Before he knew it, his knees had given out, but not before Dean had herded him to the ratty living room couch where he could sit down. "How?"

"He, uh, he was trying to take down the thing that killed our mom," Dean said, like Sam didn't know. Dean didn't sit down, he was leaning on the wall and scrubbing a hand over the back of his head like he wanted to rub something off. "It's a demon, Sam, a demon with yellow eyes. Worse than anything we've ever seen. It was my fault, it–"

"No," Sam said, immediately. "You were there. You tried to help. I'm the one who– who left you."

"Sammy, no," Dean said, voice husky. Sam thought he might be about to cry. "You got out, man. He wanted you to have a good life."

He couldn't help it — Sam barked a laugh. Dean's head snapped his way, but Sam held up a hand. When he was a little younger, Sam had wanted all three of them, John, Dean, and him, to settle down together. Dean would find an honest job, and Sam would have a dad who was proud of his son that scored a full ride to college, and John would — well, here Sam had to admit that even his imagination stalled out. He could never imagine John Winchester doing anything other than hunting monsters. It was, in a way, fitting that he would go out hunting the monster that upended their lives.

"Do you know where it is? This demon?"

Dean closed his mouth and watched him. Sam didn't like the calculated look in his eyes, but he clenched his fists in his lap and waited for an answer.

"No," he said at last. "But I'm trying to find out."

"Alright," Sam said and stood up. "When do we leave?"

"As soon as you're done packing." 

And just like that, the last four years melted away, and Sam was back on the trail of vengeance that had marked their entire childhood.

* * *

Four years, and getting back out on the road felt like stepping into a pair of well-worn shoes. Dean seemed content to have Sam in the passenger seat, drumming his fingers on the wheel and humming along to something mellow and melodious on the radio.

"What is this song?" Sam asked, turning the volume up just a bit. "Doesn't sound like the stuff you usually listen to."

"You kidding, Sammy? This has been on the radio all summer, it's Springsteen's new album."

"Since when do you listen to Springsteen?" Sam asked, incredulous. He watched Dean openly now, and he saw him frown, affronted.

"Like I said, he's on the radio a lot," Dean said, defensively. "C'mon, it's not like I've bought the vinyl or anything."

Sam didn't reply, he just listened to the song for a while. _You can't start a fire,_ Bruce crooned. _Worryin' about your little world fallin' apart. This gun's for hire. Even if we're just dancin' in the dark_

"Are you okay?" Sam said then, into the comfortable silence that had fallen between them. He'd taken a Psych course on The Kübler-Ross model, or the five stages of grief. He knew it wasn't necessarily a linear process — he himself had skipped right over denial and started out with anger. He wondered what stage Dean was on.

Dean glanced his way before he looked back on the road. The morning light lit up his eyes, made them flame gold instead of their usual hazel green.

"I'm fine, Sammy. Really." Sam saw his knuckles on the steering wheel blanch for a second. "Or I will be when we put this son of a bitch down."

For a second, Sam allowed himself to imagine a world where they didn't have to hunt demons, a world where both their parents were still alive and still living in that house in Lawrence, Kansas, that Sam had only seen pictures of. Maybe, after they killed this demon, they could settle down somewhere, Sam could finish school, and they would leave the ghost hunting to someone else.

It was nothing more than a fantasy. But Sam allowed himself to dream as their dad's '67 Chevy Impala ate up the asphalt and spat it out behind them, the rising sun dead ahead.

* * *

Four years, and it turned out hunting the supernatural was like riding a bike. Sam wasn't proud of the excitement simmering inside him, of the thrill of the chase. He'd always held it against John Winchester, the single-minded obsession the man had with solving a case, but he could recognize it now in the way he felt his gut tightening as his mind connected the dots.

They had stopped in a roadside bar for Dean to take a break from driving, but Dean had promptly gone up to the bar, while Sam had immersed himself in their father's journal. The thick, leatherbound thing filled to the brim with newspaper clippings detailing supernatural occurrences all over the lower 48 states, and the leafs of paper cramped with John Winchester's neat hand laying out the lore and ways to deal with various supernatural creatures, was splayed open, half on top of a newspaper he'd managed to scrounge up and half on top of the sticky table at the corner of the bar.

Sam circled a notice in the newspaper with a leaky ball point pen and looked up to catch sight of his brother. He saw him leaned on the bar, beer in hand and talking with the burly, bearded bartender with a joviality that Sam suspected had to be feigned. He had always been a little jealous of Dean's ability to fit in wherever he went. Last night, on their stop just east of the Arizona border, Dean had disappeared from their motel room and turned back up before sunup, with his collar askew and showing a red love bite, giving Sam a blinding grin. But that's what Dean always did; acted like everything was sunshine and roses even when he was near as dying inside.

If he had it half as bad as Sam, he had to be dying. Sam felt the death of their father as a burning coal in the pit of his stomach, a dull throbbing behind his eyes.

When Dean finally glanced his way, Sam motioned for him to come back. Dean said something to the bartender, picked up his beer bottle and swaggered back to Sam and plopped down in the chair opposite.

"Get this," Sam said and tapped the pen to the newspaper. "New Mexico's been beset by really weird weather."

"Weather? Oh no," Dean said sarcastically and took a swig of his beer. "Better go get the shotgun, if there's _weather."_

"Shut up, asshole," Sam snapped. "Here's a report on an, and I quote, 'electrical storm in the middle of a blue sky'. And there's also mentions of cattle mutilations. Dean, those are both classic demon signs."

Dean had the bottle tipped to his mouth, but his lips split into a grin around it. "Look at you, getting back in the saddle. Alright, Sam, let's go to New Mexico."

* * *

"God, if I have to listen to one more suburban mom complain about her son consorting with Satan because he plays that nerdy board game, I'm gonna lose it," Dean said and pulled at the collar of his t-shirt. It was late October, but the air was hot, and Sam didn't know how Dean could stand wearing that old denim jacket he refused to part with. 

"You mean Dungeons and Dragons?" Sam said and looked down at his notepad, where he'd scrawled the addresses of the eyewitnesses to the demonic phenomena. He scratched out the current one, after taking in Dean's little headshake.

"Of course you'd know. Nerd," Dean said and pushed his hands into the pockets of the denim jacket. "Let me tell you, something's going on. But for every real demonic occurrence, there's at least a dozen demon mountains made out of totally mundane molehills."

Sam sighed and smacked John Winchester's journal down on the roof of the Impala.

"This isn't working, Dean," he said. Dean shrugged, fixing him with a look that said _what do you want me to do about it?_ and Sam rolled his eyes. "We have to make a demon come to us."

"Yeah? That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard," Dean said, with a forceful gesture to the journal. "Even if we could, how would we make it talk?"

"We could summon a crossroads demon," Sam said and put his hand down on the open page of the journal. "Dad's laid it all out. They're demons who want to make a deal in exchange for your soul."

"You want to sell your _soul_ to find the thing that killed our parents?" Dean said, shaking his head. "You're out of your mind, Sammy."

"Don't call me Sammy, and hear me out!" Sam said, forcefully. Dean snapped his mouth shut, and Sam went on, "One of us could, you know, pretend to want to make a deal, and then we could capture it. We just need some holy water, some salt, and we could force it into a devil's trap, and then _make_ it tell us where the yellow-eyed bastard who killed dad is. No souls required."

Dean opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it again. He was frowning, but his gaze was steady as he looked Sam in the eye, as if measuring something.

"Alright," he said at last and reached for the car door. "But no way am I letting _you_ talk to a demon."

* * *

Armed to the teeth with iron, salt, and holy water, Sam lay in wait as he watched his brother perform the ritual of summoning a demon. He saw Dean bury the box with graveyard dirt, the bone of a black cat, and a picture of himself, right in the middle of the crossroads — they'd chosen their spot carefully, a seldom-frequented dirt road, with a good, grassy embankment where Sam could hide out and wait for the right opportunity.

But that opportunity never came. Instead, as he watched Dean look around for something to happen, Sam could feel an invisible hand grab hold of him and yank him violently, so that he tumbled down the embankment and kicked up a cloud of dust as he landed on the road.

He heard Dean yell his name, but Sam was powerless to stop the same, intangible force from yanking him up and pinning him to the spot.

In his life, Sam had been pushed by ghosts, almost choked to death by poltergeists and had a wraith bury its claw in his neck, but nothing had prepared him for the bone-chilling dread of being immobilized and watching a shape walk closer in an unhurried saunter. The moonlight cast the shape in an eerie glow, and Sam drew in a sharp breath when the man's eyes flashed yellow.

"Well, well, well," said the demon, with a frighteningly normal voice. "Sam Winchester as I live and breathe. Well, I say live–" He flicked out a hand, and from the corner of his eye, Sam could see Dean being pushed to the roadside with the same force that kept Sam pinned to the spot.

"What do you want?" Sam gritted out. The demon tilted his head and looked at Sam with a smile on his lips, like he was curious.

"Me? You're the ones who wanted to find me. Well, here I am. What did you want, Sam?"

"I want to see you dead," Sam said, with a frank vengefulness that surprised even him. In his head he was trying to figure out how to get his hands on the sharpened stake of Palo Santo wood in his back pocket. As good as holy water, that.

"Sure, sure," the demon said good-naturedly. "Just like your daddy. Only that didn't turn out so well for him."

Sam breathed in through his nose. _Count to ten_ , he thought. In his peripheral vision, he saw Dean move.

"I'm going to kill you," Sam said, keeping his eyes fixed on the demon, so he wouldn't give Dean away. "You want to know why?"

"Please, do tell," the demon said, still smiling. Sam twitched his mouth into an approximation of a smile too.

"Because I'm not alone."

The demon threw his head back to laugh. But the joke was on him, because Dean had managed to crawl up the embankment and gotten his hands on the shotgun filled with rock salt. He turned on his back and fired off a shot at the yellow-eyed demon, who took a surprised step to the side. Sam could feel his attention waver, the grip on him loosen, so he grabbed the stake from his back pocket and threw himself at the demon.

But the demon didn't seem to be interested in a fight. Sam saw him blink, and then he was gone, just vanished in the same blink of an eye, and Sam could only stand there with his wooden stake in his hands and breathing hard. The only thing that proved the demon had ever been there was a lingering stench of sulphur.

"Well," Dean said, also out of breath where he pushed himself upright, taking a few staggering steps closer to Sam. "That went about as well as I thought it would."

"We know he isn't invincible," Sam said, closing his eyes for a moment, taking in the night sounds. He hadn't realized the cicadas had gone silent when the demon had appeared; they were back now in full force, and the sound was soothing. "If he was, he wouldn't have run."

"So where do we go now?" Dean said, already turning his head to spy down the road, where they had left the car.

"Back to where it all began, I think," Sam said. "Let's go to Kansas."

* * *

Four years respite, but now Sam could see the rest of his life stretch out before him, and it wasn't a life he had dreamed about. No, it looked a lot like Route 66, spelling the way back to the start of it all. On the radio, the newscaster told them that the votes were in and that Ronald Reagan was well on his way to be re-elected, and the setting sun glinted off the rearview mirror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can't tell me Dean didn't see the iconic and controversial _Born In the U.S.A_ (1984) album cover, featuring Bruce Springsteen's butt with a red scarf hanging out of the back pocket of his jeans, and didn't feel a hot, unbecoming rush to his nethers. He will, however, die before admitting this to Sam.  
> Route 66 was discontinued in 1985, so the boys _only just_ had time to zip along it here, whew!


	2. No Quarter

**1985**

* * *

**I.**

* * *

All they had found in Kansas was a woman named Missouri Mosely, who, it turned out, was a psychic. Dean had found  _ that  _ out the hard way when she told them to look to their friends, and then promptly smacked Dean on the head.

"Ow! What was that for? We don't have any friends," Dean had said and rubbed the back of his head. Sam snickered loudly.

"That's why I slapped you. Of course you have friends!" Missouri had said.  _ "I'm  _ a friend! And you won't make it out of this alone."

And so they'd turned to the person they knew who could put them in touch with other hunters: Bobby Singer.

If Dean had had a choice, he would not have weathered Christmas and New Years in South Dakota. He squinted at the white-gray sky, and the snowflakes that singled down one by one and got stuck in his hair. But South Dakota was where Bobby Singer was, and where Bobby was, was also the most extensive occult library that Dean knew. Not that you would know from looking at it, this rundown house painted in earth tones, in the middle of a salvage yard. If it was warmer, he'd be sitting on the porch; now he stood by the corner and watched his Impala slowly get covered by a fine layer of snow and smoked his cigarette in sullen silence.

He remembered being left here with Sam as a kid for long stretches of time, when their dad had something else to take care of. They'd lived through several semesters in little Sioux Fall elementary school, and all the other kids had looked sideways at the grumpy old man who'd come by to pick up the Winchester boys in his rusty, blue Ford tow-truck.

It made Dean feel defensive at the time — he'd squared his shoulders, glared at anyone who dared to snigger. It hadn't taken long for his reputation to go around; the kids knew he was trouble and could hold his own in a fight. They left him alone. Sam, on the other hand, Sam had made friends.

Now, the memory made Dean smile around his cigarette. Funny how Sam made friends easy as breathing, while he fought with his family every step of the way. Used to be it was John who got an earful, but now the only one left was Dean.

"Is it so hard to believe, Dean?" Sam had said, pointing at the book about angel lore on Bobby's kitchen table. "I mean, there has to be a reason holy water and consecrated ground repel demons! What if angels are real?"

"They're not!" Dean had insisted. "We don't know why holy water works, we just know that it does, and I'd rather stick to what we know that put our trust in, what,  _ divine intervention?  _ That's bullshit."

Sam had huffed, and Dean had stormed out, grabbing his jacket on the way. It wasn't nearly enough to ward off the cold, but he'd dug out his pack of Lucky Strikes and his lighter and decided to stay out here until he'd cooled down or he'd finished the cigarette. Whichever came first. God, he'd missed his stupid little brother so much, but that didn't mean he couldn't be insufferable sometimes.

He plucked the cigarette from his mouth and watched the smoke curl lazily from the glowing tip. Gun to his head, he couldn't say why Sam's insistence on believing in a higher power rubbed him the wrong way, but it did. No higher power was going to make sure Sam was safe — that was Dean's job.

The front door opened with a creak of unoiled hinges. Dean turned to see Bobby stick his head out, wearing his characteristic ball cap and graying beard.

"Get your fool ass inside, before you freeze it off!" Bobby said gruffly. "We think we got something."

* * *

What they got was a set of coordinates for Harvelle's Roadhouse. Bill Harvelle had worked with John Winchester on tracking down the Yellow-Eyed Demon, and his widow still ran the place. Bobby had never been down to the Roadhouse himself, but many hunters that he knew tended to frequent the place.

So Sam and Dean packed themselves into the Impala early next morning, so early that it was still pitch black. It took a couple tries, with Dean's gentle coaxing, before the engine had hummed to life in the cold, but then they were on the road heading south.

The Roadhouse turned out to be just that; a house on the side of the road, all alone in the Nebraska wilderness. Dean parked the Impala just beside it — there were no other cars in the vicinity other than a weathered old flatbed truck with a blanket of snow on top of it, which seemed promising. He didn't like walking into a place like this not knowing how many were inside.

He didn't expect the place to be totally empty though. Dean felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, sensing danger in the eerie calmness of the inside; the only thing moving was the dust settling from the opening of the door. It looked like your typical dive, with the gloomy winter sun shining through the grimy windows and highlighting the liquor bottles lining the shelf behind the bar, and several tables strewn about wherever they fit. Some sixth sense had Dean look to the far end of the room, away from the windows, and he caught sight of the body of a man splayed across a tabletop, completely still.

Quietly, Dean signaled for Sam to go check it out. He pulled out his trusted ivory-gripped Colt, without cocking it, and held it up perpendicular to his face as he moved to push open the swing doors to the back of the bar.

He was met by the barrel of a gun pointed right between his eyes. Instinct honed by experience made Dean freeze and then slowly uncurl the pointer finger he'd rested against the trigger guard of his own gun.

"Back out. Slowly," said a calm, low voice. Dean managed to look past the threatening gun barrel right in front of his eyes and focus on the woman holding the gun itself. She was somewhere near forty, with worry lining her square face and already graying her hay-colored hair, and she fixed him with a level look, as calm as her voice. If things were different, Dean would have gone out on a limb and called her beautiful.

With things being the way they were, Dean complied with orders and retreated, slowly.

"Hey, Sam," he called, and from the corner of his eye, he saw Sam advance with his hands in the air.

"Hey, Dean," Sam replied, morosely. With a sinking feeling, Dean realized he was also held at gunpoint, and it took conscious effort on Dean's part not to coil his entire body for an attack.

"Sam and Dean?" the woman said. "Not the Winchesters, are you?"

"Depends on who's asking," Dean said, with what he hoped was a winning smile. Judging by the unimpressed look he got in response, it wasn't. "Yeah, we are."

"I'll be damned," the woman said and lowered her gun. "I'm Ellen, and that there is my daughter Jo. Jo, put the shotgun away, these are John Winchester's boys."

The girl with the shotgun lowered it, and Dean could breathe out. He tucked his own gun back in the lining of his jeans and gave Ellen another smile, a genuine one. "I suppose our reputation precedes us."

Ellen scoffed and put out her arm to lean on the doorframe. "Your daddy's reputation precedes you. How is John these days?"

And just like that, the hurt was back, as fresh as the day Dean had watched his dad die. He swallowed, and tried not to let it show.

"That's why we're here," Sam said, delicately. "We're trying to find the thing that killed him."

* * *

Ellen brought out the good stuff. All four of them took up station around the bar, and she poured them all a shot of bourbon — even Jo, who couldn't be a day over eighteen. But then again, Dean had had his first drink at the tender age of twelve, and had been blackout drunk once or twice at sixteen.

"To John Winchester," Ellen said grimly and held up her glass. It glowed amber where the light hit it. "He was a bastard, but a good man."

"Hear hear," Dean said and threw back his portion before he upended the glass on the bartop.

Sam followed suit a little more reservedly, and Jo drank her portion while pulling a face. Dean couldn't help but grin at her when she set her glass down. Jo looked pointedly at him, an open challenge.

"What? Just 'cause I don't like bourbon doesn't mean I can't hold my liquor," she said and crossed her arms and leaned her hip against the bar. Dean shook his head and shifted a little where he sat on the barstool with his elbows on the bartop.

"I never said you couldn't," Dean said. Jo made another face at him, which made him laugh.

"So you knew John," Sam said, to Ellen. "Bobby said that, uh, your husband used to work with him back in the day."

Something dark clouded Ellen's face for a moment. She still had the bottle in her hand, and she gave herself a refill before she set it away. "Yeah, they used to," she said curtly.

Something in her tone made Dean prick his ears. There was bad blood here, he was certain of it, but Ellen was the one who had called John Winchester a good man. Although it was easy to remember only the good things about someone after they were no longer able to do the bad things.

"You said you're after the thing that killed him," Ellen continued and took a measured sip of her bourbon.

"A yellow-eyed demon," Sam confirmed, rolling his own, empty glass between his palms. "He paid us a visit, too, but he let us go. I don't think he's going to be easy to trap."

"You need to kill him," Ellen said with a decisive nod. "And I think I've got just what you need."

She disappeared back to where she had come from. Dean exchanged a quiet look with Sam — things usually didn't go this easy.

A faint tug at his sleeve had Dean look down. Jo had hooked a finger in his rolled-up shirtsleeve to pull it up a bit and was looking at the black lines of the tattoos snaking up from his wrist and disappearing under his shirt.

"This one, it's a protection rune, isn't it?" she said and tapped a line of symbols stretching along Dean's forearm. She flicked her gaze up to look Dean in the eyes. "But I don't recognize the rest."

"Warding sigils, mostly," Dean said and carefully pulled his arm away, resisting the urge to roll down his sleeve. "Some spells. I was never good at memorizing symbols, so I figured I'd bring my cheat sheet with me everywhere I go."

Jo flicked her hair out of her eyes and regarded him under heavy eyelids. She was very pretty, with a pointed face and long, blonde hair, and Dean had a suspicion she knew very well how attractive she was. Dean also knew it wasn't a good thing to be, not in the company they had to keep in a place like this, not even when she was using it on purpose.

At least she had her mother looking out for her. Ellen came back out with a wooden box in her hands, and she cleared her throat loudly when her gaze fell on the two of them. Dean lifted his hands to show he wasn't up to anything, and Jo gave an irritated huff as she pulled away.

"This is a blade that can kill demons," Ellen said and thunked the wooden box down on the bartop. She opened the lid to reveal a mean-looking knife, with a sharp tip and a serrated edge and a handle made of bone. The blade itself was engraved with symbols Dean didn't recognize.

"And you're willing to just give it to us?" Sam said, echoing Dean's internal skepticism.

Ellen shrugged. "That demon killed my husband too. I want to see it dead, but I have a business to run and people to keep safe–" She looked to Jo, who pouted a little but met her gaze dead on, "–so I can't just run off to hunt monsters whenever I like. I think I can trust you boys to finish the job."

"We will," Sam promised and reached for the knife.

Some instinct in Dean wanted to stop him – if anyone was going to put themselves in harm's way to use that blade to kill the yellow-eyed demon, it was Dean. But at the same time, Dean recognized the single-minded intent in Sam's eyes as he lifted the knife and inspected it carefully. It was the same intent Dean had seen in their dad's eyes growing up. There would be no swaying Sam from this.

"Alright, well," Dean said and slapped both his hands to the bartop. "Now all we need is to find the bastard."

"We can help with that too," Jo chipped in quickly. "Hey, Ash! Wake up!"

Dean had forgotten all about the still body he'd clocked on his way in. And so he had a nice little heart attack about it when, at the far end of the room, someone sat up with a drunken snort. The blood rushed in Dean's ears as he willed the flood of adrenaline to recede.

The previously lifeless body turned out to be Ash. Ash turned out to be a hippie with a genius-level intellect and a drinking problem. Dean had to admire him; he looked like a Lynyrd Skynyrd roadie the morning after a gig, complete with the mullet and the shadows under his eyes, but when they told him they needed to find a demon, he immediately pulled out a catalogue of demonic omens all across the continental United States from the last five years, painstakingly collected from different channels and carefully indexed.

Thanks to this catalogue and Dean and Sam's encounters, they were able to ring in just what sort of omens accompanied the yellow-eyed demon in particular, a pattern of cattle deaths, temperature fluctuations, and electrical storms that heralded his appearance.

"I usually keep pretty good track of these things," Ash said, with a confident drawl. "I can call you up when this motherfucker is about to show his ugly mug."

"What, are we just supposed to sit here and do nothing?" Sam exclaimed. Dean shook his head and gave him a friendly shove.

"There's always work to do, Sam," he said. "Speaking of, Ellen, can you please direct us to some far less respectable establishment than this? I need to find some sucker to hustle at pool."

"Dean, I'm sure we could make some money lawfully, if we tried," Sam said, when they'd said their goodbyes and headed for the door.

"Didn't you know, Sam?" Dean said with a humorless grin as he swung the door open. "This country's already lawless. We're just not rich enough to get away with it."

* * *

**II.**

* * *

The call finally came in the dog days of summer, when Dean was in the middle of a rundown graveyard in Missouri and up to his elbows in ghoul viscera, sweating through his t-shirt and deeply regretting leaving Sam behind at the motel to do research. 

Separating the last ghoul from its head had resulted in Dean's machete buried in a tree trunk. With a grunt, he managed to pull it loose, but that meant he didn't hear the car approach. He finally wisened up, when the headlights shone off the gravestones, and he cast around desperately for a way to either obscure the monster massacre or hide himself.

But it turned out to be just Sam. He must've gotten over whatever conscience he had developed in Stanford; the practical, gray Vauxhall Cavalier he got out of had to be hotwired, because the Impala was safely parked just up the road.

"Good of you to show up," Dean said, wiping flecks of ghoul blood off his face, hefting the machete nonchalantly. "You can clean up this entire mess."

"Dean," Sam said. "Ash got ahold of me. He thinks the demon might show up in Colorado."

A cold sort of calm fell over Dean. He wiped the machete off on his already ruined t-shirt and said, "Alright, let's get going."

* * *

They'd spent months carefully laying out plans on how to deal with Yellow Eyes when he finally popped back up. Dean was an optimist at heart, but he really should have known all of that was going to go to hell in a handbasket.

Their first clue should have been that there was no hint of the yellow-eyed demon at all.

"All signs point to here," Dean said and smacked his hands against the steering wheel, looking through the windshield at the abandoned warehouse just outside of the town of Blue River. "But this looks like _ jack shit  _ to me!"

"Let's just go and check it out," Sam said. Dean saw him touch the demon blade he kept in his inner jacket pocket, like a talisman.

"Yeah," Dean said and looked at him for a beat, The serious lines on his brow made Sam look older than he was, but the brown hair that draped across his face when he leaned down made him look like the kid Dean still felt he was. "Let's go."

Armed with their weapons and heavy flashlights, they entered the warehouse cautiously. The space inside was vast and echoed with the drip of moldy water, but was totally empty. Sam and Dean looked at each other and, as one, went to the door on the wall that bisected the building. 

Pressed up against the wall beside the door, Dean pushed it open so Sam could enter first. Dean followed him into a narrow corridor, and they split up to cover each end.

It was strange, Dean mused as he walked soundlessly across the concrete floor, all senses on high alert, how quickly he and Sam had fallen into a working routine together. Dean was so used to playing second fiddle to his dad that it felt quite natural to now take cues from Sam.

He reached the end of the corridor, with only one detour into what turned out to be an empty storage closet. "Jack shit," he muttered to himself and lowered his gun just enough to close the closet door.

A shout sounded from the other end of the corridor, and Dean lifted his gun immediately and had started running before the echo had died down.

"Sam!" he shouted, heart pounding desperately. "Sammy!"

He came to a skidding halt by the mouth of an open door, and entered it apprehensively, scared of what he might find inside. He caught sight of Sam's towering figure, with one hand outstretched to lean against the wall and the knife in the other. Moonlight from the outside shone in through cracked and broken windows, and Sam had already put his flashlight away.

"I almost stepped through this wooden floor — it's rotted through," Sam said with a grimace. "Look." He used the toe of his boot to poke at a sizable hole in the floorboards.

Dean lowered his gun and looked around. The place looked abandoned and undisturbed. "Well, unless we think old Yellow Eyes is hiding under there, I'd say this is a goddamn bust."

"Yeah," Sam said, broad shoulders slumping. "I guess we'd better give it up."

Dean would never be able to say what exactly it was that clued him in. Something disdainful in Sam's expression, or the fact that Sam let him take the lead without protest maybe. Or just that he had given up too quickly. But Dean hadn't taken many steps down the corridor before he swung around, gun up and pointed at Sam.

"Whoa, Dean, what are you doing?" the thing wearing his brother's face said, in a convincing approximation of Sam's mannerisms. Dean didn't waver.

"Get out," Dean said, through gritted teeth.

"Or what, you'll shoot?" not-Sam said, dropping the façade like a stripper drops her top. "Dean, please. You won't risk harming your little baby brother, will you?"

Seeing Sam's eyes flash yellow over a lazy grin made something bitter climb up Dean's throat.

"I could shoot you in the leg," Dean offered. "Won't kill either of you, but it sure as hell would hurt."

The demon made a gesture, and Dean felt himself be pushed violently and pressed up against the wall with enough force that the gun and the flashlight dropped out of his hands. The air was pushed out of his lungs with the impact, and he knew his back would be covered in bruises come morning.

"How did you think this was going to go, Dean?" Yellow Eyes teased, sauntering in close. "I mean, did you think I was just going to appear and let you stab me with–" Here he seemed to realize what he was holding, and lifted the knife up to eye height. "–this little toothpick?"

He was now close enough that Dean could smell the sulphur on his breath. Knowing Sam was trapped inside, screaming, made Dean clench his fists and strain to break free of the demon's supernatural hold. But he could only watch helplessly as the demon shifted his grip on the knife and used it to cut a neat little slash across Dean's cheek. He felt the blood well out, hot and sticky, before the pain registered.

"Poor Sammy," the demon said, sounding so unlike Sam that Dean wondered how he'd been fooled for even a second. "Wonder how he'll feel when I leave him, and he'll find himself standing over your dead body. Dead, Dean, because I'm going to drain you of every ounce of blood you have. Slowly."

"I get that this is how you get off," Dean forced out. "But don't you have better things to do?"

The demon threw its head back to laugh. "Better? Sure. But this is _ fun," _ he said and used the tip of the knife to push the collar of Dean's shirt to the side and trace the line of his throat down to his clavicle. The cold metal tickled. "You know something about fun, don't you Dean?"

"Come on, Sam," Dean said, pushing every bit of pleading he had into his voice. "You can fight this. I know you can."

Sam's eyes looked into his, shining yellow. But then the yellow flickered, once, twice, and then Sam was blinking and stepping back, and whatever hold the demon had on Dean loosened so suddenly that Dean crumpled to the floor in a heap

"Dean?" Sam said breathlessly, and Dean tried to get to his feet. Sam closed his eyes, forehead furrowed in concentration. "Dean, I can feel him, he's–"

And then Sam opened his eyes and met Dean's. A fraction of a second passed, and Dean saw him shift the grip on the demon knife again.

"No," Dean said, but it was too late. Sam plunged the knife into his own chest in one, smooth movement, so smooth that for a second, Dean thought it must have been a retractable blade. Surely it couldn't have pierced anything.

But then Sam's mouth opened in a soft gasp, and something orange-and-red flamed bright from deep within him with a horrible, crackling noise. He fell to the floor slowly, knees first, long body folding in on itself, and Dean only managed to reach him in time to keep his head from hitting the floor.

Kneeling on the dirty warehouse floor, Dean cradled his little brother's body as blood welled out from between his lips.

"Demon's dead," Sam said. His gaze was losing focus, and Dean desperately grabbed one of his hands. "I'm sorry, Dean."

"Don't be sorry," Dean said. "You did it Sam, you fought a demonic possession! That's one for the history books. We'll get you patched up, don't you worry, don't–"

But Sam's eyes were vacant, and his chest had stopped rising and falling. Dean closed his own eyes but couldn't stop the tears from spilling out and stinging the still bleeding cut on his cheek.

* * *

**III.**

* * *

When Dean was four, his mother died in a fire. At least, that's what the newspaper said. Dean was just old enough to understand that it wasn't the whole truth, and Dean was the only one his dad could tell the truth to, when he found it out. Sammy was just a baby then, a little baby that Dean had carried out of a house going up in flames. But when Sammy grew up, he learned the same thing Dean did; a monster had broken into their home and killed their mother.

When Dean was twenty-five, the same monster, a yellow-eyed demon, killed his father. Dean hadn't told anyone, but it was his fault. If he hadn't been there, if he hadn't distracted John Winchester at the precisely wrong moment, the demon never would have gotten the drop on him.

And not even a year later, when Dean was twenty-six, Sam died in his arms for killing that yellow-eyed son of a bitch.

Without taking his eyes off the road or the foot off the gas pedal, Dean used the back of his hand to wipe at his nose. The demon blade was lying bloody on the passenger seat. He refused to think about the sound of it being pulled out of Sam's body.

He brought the Impala to a screeching halt by a cross section of the dirt road marked with a lone road sign. Leaving the driver door open, he marched to the trunk, threw it open and started to dig through the assortment of weaponry and occult tools they kept in there until he got his hands on the little metal box with graveyard dirt, the bone of a black cat, and a cutout of his picture from a fake US Wildlife service ID.

Dean grabbed a shovel while he was at it, and stomped his way over to the midsection of the crossroads. His breath formed white clouds in the chilly night air as he put the shovel to the dirt and carved out a hole to throw the box in. He tossed the shovel aside and used his bare hands to smooth the dirt back on top, and then he stood up and waited.

He didn't have to wait long. The wind rustled through the trees lining one side of the road, and Dean felt his neck prickle like he was being watched. He swung around on one foot, and came nose to nose with a woman in a black dress and who had long, wavy dark hair.

Before he had the chance to wonder, her eyes flashed blood red.

"Hi there, Dean," she said slowly, looking him up and down appraisingly. 

"I want to make a deal," he said. Her presence made his skin crawl, and he regretted leaving the demon killing blade in the car.

The demon rolled her eyes. "No, duh. I'm a crossroads demon, deals are what we do." Here she paused and took a step closer to Dean. He didn't miss the seductive way she swung her hips; like Dean was ever going to for something that smelled of rotten eggs. "I would've loved to broker a deal with you last time, but Azazel had precedence."

"Azazel?" Dean said, before the penny dropped. "Yellow Eyes."

"The very same," the crossroads demon said and walked a little circle around Dean, who had to dig his fingernails into his palms to be able to stand still. "Although I hear  _ he  _ is no longer an issue. So tell me Dean, what can I do you for?"

She had made her way back to his front and reached out a hand to trail a perfectly manicured fingernail just below the cut on Dean's cheek. He felt his eye twitch at the contact.

"I want to make a deal," he repeated. "I want Sam back alive."

"Oh? And what are you prepared to give me in exchange?

Dean shrugged. "Isn't a soul the usual price? My soul after ten years."

The demon smiled, a pointed smile. Her eyes flashed red again. "That may be the usual price, but this isn't usual circumstances, is it? No." She tilted her head back a little, to look at Dean under her lashes. "One year, and you get Sam back as good as new. That's the best I can offer."

Maybe condescension so thick you could swim in it was how every demon talked, but Dean was sick of it.

"Deal," Dean said.

The demon parted her ruby red lips, clearly taken aback at Dean's ready compliance. But then those ruby red lips curled into a smile.

"Eager," she said and swayed in closer. "I usually don't like clingy guys but–" She paused to flick her gaze down to Dean's mouth, and then back up again. "You are just irresistible. Can't wait to have your pretty little face all to myself."

"So we're agreed, then?" Dean said, voice rough. The demon's smile only widened. 

"A deal is sealed with a kiss," she said and set her hand on Dean's chest. Dean's stomach turned. She looked at him for a beat, and then rolled her eyes dramatically. "Oh shoot, should I have possessed a man instead? Or do you only kiss  _ them  _ for money?"

Dean closed his eyes for a moment. It didn't matter what some demon thought of him. It didn't matter even if it was true. 

He opened his eyes and grasped the back of her head. He took no joy in the look of surprise on her face, and closed his eyes again to be able to press his mouth to hers in a rough imitation of a kiss.

* * *

In the abandoned warehouse two and a half miles away, Sam sat up with a gasp and reflexively pressed his hands to his chest. They came away bloody, but there was no wound anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [holds up sign] Dean Winchester is a socialist and hunters are a counterculture


	3. Good Times Bad Times

* * *

**I.**

* * *

"This might be something," Sam said, to grab Dean's attention. Dean, who was half a beer into an episode of _Knight Rider,_ didn't much want to divert his attention. It wasn't every day they splurged on a motel with a shitty little TV. "Get over here!"

"God, I should never have saved your life," Dean said with a groan and rolled off the surprisingly comfortable bed.

"That's right, you shouldn't have," Sam said primly. "But you did, and I'll find a way to break that deal. Look at this."

Sam pushed a Missouri newspaper Dean's way, and Dean dutifully sat down at the rickety table and looked at the text Sam had circled.

"Why do we care what some Christian cuckoo cult is doing?" Dean asked, skimming the article. "I mean, I also don't like the government, but that's not because I think they're a Jewish conspiracy to bring about the end of the world, it's just because the government sucks."

"Listen to this," Sam said and cleared his throat before he started to read from another paper. "'Members of the SAL, short for 'The Sword and the Arm of the Lord" a Christian organisation with ties to far-right and neo-nazi organisations, has been brought in for questioning regarding the death of a local politician, after he voiced loud concerns about their activities."

"So they're a murdering cuckoo cult," Dean said and shivered theatrically. "Ugh, I hate people. With monsters, there's rules. Silver does it for werewolves and shapeshifters, iron and salt works on ghosts, and you can figure out why they do what they do. People are just nuts."

"Dean, the politician just dropped dead," Sam said. "They thought it might have been poison, but the tox screen came back clean. He just had a heart attack, within twelve hours of speaking out against this organization. And the same happened to a police officer who apprehended one of their members for theft, and the head of a local _fishing_ organization who complained about them scaring away people who wanted to fish."

"Okay, why are you telling me all this?"

"Because," Sam said and blew out a breath through his nose, "the SAL say they're doing the Lord's work with the help of an, and I quote, 'avenging angel'."

Dean waited a beat, just to see if Sam would break eye contact. He didn't, and Dean sighed.

"Not this again, Sam," he said and stood up. "Angels aren't–"

"But what if they are," Sam interjected. "And what if these– these people have found a way to, I don't know, make it do their bidding? You know, like witches have been known to enslave demons? Either way, Dean, they're killing people, and we have to stop them."

"I can't argue with you there, Sam." Regretfully, Dean drained his beer bottle in one sweep. He burped and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before he said, "But I still don't think it's an angel."

"Fine," Sam said and threw his hands up. "Let's just go in there and make them stop whatever magic they're using to kill people."

"Sounds good to me. How do you want to do it?"

"I think– I think I need to infiltrate them," Sam said and pulled a hand through his too-long hair and stared down at his research as if it would help him.

Dean stared at him. "What? You? You, with your 'would've been an actual Federal agent in another life' vibe are going to be a mole?"

Sam looked up at him, his frown turning irritated. "Yeah, me," he said. "Dean, please, we both know you'd last about two seconds undercover. Unless you're willing to add some, I don't know, Nazi symbolism to your tattoo collection."

Dean made a face and touched his forearm protectively. "I'd be amazing at being undercover," he said, even though he knew Sam was right. "Look, it's too dangerous. What if they find out–"

"Find out what?" Sam interrupted. He raised his eyebrows in a challenge. "That I had a troubled childhood and am a law school drop out with some run-ins with law enforcement? Yeah, that'll totally blow my cover."

Dean blew out a loud breath through thin pressed lips. "Alright," he said reluctantly. Then he cocked his head. "You really think you had a troubled childhood?"

Sam shrugged. "I mean, it could've been worse," he said with a lopsided little smile. "At least we had each other."

"Damn straight," Dean said and turned away decisively, so that Sam wouldn't notice how his voice broke around the lump that formed in his throat. 

* * *

**II.**

* * *

Dean was beginning to question sending in Sam. For one, it meant that Sam got to be inside their stupid little training facility while Dean sat outside in the rain, rifle at the ready with nothing but a paperback for company — a ragged copy of a book by some guy named Hunter S. Thompson — waiting for Sam to check in.

He shrugged his jacket collar up over his ears and tried to make himself comfortable, which was fucking impossible when sat on the wooded hill just outside "The Farm", which was what the SAL called their compound close to the Arkansas border. Dean could see a guard walk the perimeter at regular intervals, but they were all about as observant as bricks, so Dean's little hideout in the forest had gone unnoticed. Sam had waltzed into their organization smooth as anything — just a carefully orchestrated argument with a sheriff (who Sam and Dean had happened to help kill a werewolf some months back) in a carefully chosen location, and Sam had been approached by a couple of burly guys in camo cargo pants.

So Sam now had free access to their little boys' club, and had given Dean the long and the short of it — their leader, a guy named Ellison, and their "high priest" talked a lot about being "Christian survivalists who believe in preparing for the ultimate holocaust" and about how “the coming war is a step towards God's government."

"They say they've found some forgotten scripture," Sam had relayed some days ago. " _'Through the acts of sinners, the Devil will be freed and lay the world in ruins through an apocalyptic war'._ So, basically, they think they're, um, going to thin out the Devil's armies before that war happens, and also train to be soldiers in that war."

That training consisted of shooting exercises in a fake little town square they had built out of plywood and crates, running around and yelling at each other like they were in an active warzone. And these guys wanted to overthrow the government before the biblical apocalypse happened. Dean scoffed and turned a page in his paperback. Truly, Christianity's finest.

Dean almost dropped the book when the handheld transceiver in his duffel bag crackled to life. _"Dean? Can you hear me?"_ came Sam's voice, distorted by the buzzing transmission.

"Aye-firmative," Dean said into the mouthpiece of the walkie-talkie. "Five by five. Wall to wall and treetop tall."

_"Alright, C. W. McCall,"_ Sam said. Dean imagined he sounded amused. _"There's definitely something going on. I'm pretty sure I saw a secret passageway in Ellison's office that no one but him has access to, not even the high priest. I think it must lead to a root cellar on the property."_

"Yahtzee," Dean said. "Alright, you go through the passageway, and I'll break my way into the root cellar from outside."

_"Yeah alright,"_ Sam said, with a crackle of noise that had to be a sigh. He started to say something else, but through the airwaves Dean heard something that sounded a lot like a door being kicked open, and some voices shouting.

"Sam?" he tried, but the transmission cut off and Dean was left staring at a dead walkie talkie. "Fuck," he said before he turned it off and stuffed it back in the duffelbag and pulled out his gun instead.

In the falling dusk, Dean made his way down the slope. It was laughably easy to circumvent the guard, and even though activity seemed to have been stirred up – no doubt thanks to Sam being discovered – Dean still managed to circle around the compound without being detected.

The root cellar Dean found by the main house was bolted with heavy chains and a padlock.

"Yeah, that's not for keeping the potatoes safe," Dean said with a disdainful sniff and fished out his lockpicking set. It was the work of a few minutes, and then the chains rattled to the ground and Dean was in.

It smelled of root cellar; earthy and mouldy and _dark,_ if dark had a smell. But it did not contain root vegetables — Dean's flashlight illuminated a table dressed in cloth and covered in various ritual accoutrements; a bowl on a taped pentagram, herbs, a book, and what looked like a coptic cross.

Intrigued, Dean took a closer look. The book was open on a page detailing a binding spell; it took Dean a second to get used to the old gothic typesetting before he could read it in its entirety. He gingerly turned the page, and as he did, several newspaper clippings fell out from between the pages of the book. "Politician protests local paramilitary organization" read one headline. "SAL member apprehended by police" another.

"Can't believe Sam was right," Dean muttered. _Something_ was bound by a spell to do the dirty work of this rotten organization. Fantastic.

The sound of a door creaking open on its hinges reached him, and Dean dropped the clippings and went out the same way he'd come in. Wouldn't do Sam much good if he got caught, too.

He needed to find out what it was they were holding captive before he let it loose. That meant finding Sam. So he set about circling the house, looking for a way in. If Sam had been found out, surely they were keeping him in HQ.

Dean had to duck around the corner and press himself against the wall and hold his breath while two men with AK-47s marched past. _God,_ Dean thought exasperatedly. _Why couldn't this bunch just Jonestown themselves already?_

He ducked back out when the coast was clear, but something made him stop in his tracks. _Something_ was pinging his radar, but no matter how he looked over his shoulder or tried to hear anything that heralded trouble, he couldn't figure out what it was. So with his senses on high alert, he crept up to the front door.

The front fucking door, and they didn't have anyone guarding it. If Dean wasn't busy saving Sam, he'd laugh. It took two kicks to get open, but it opened, and Dean walked in with his gun ready, and came face to face with his own brother after two steps.

"Dean!" Sam said.

"Sam!" Dean said and lowered his gun. "What's going on?"

"They left me handcuffed to a table," Sam said, with all the scorn such an act deserved. He looked a little ruffled, but none the worse for wear. "They heard me talking to you, they're out there looking for you now!"

"These guys couldn't find their own asshole if they farted," Dean said and motioned for Sam to follow him back out. "Oh, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but you're right, they have bound something in the root cellar. Found an altar."

"Then we need to go to the root cellar and find out what! Come on," Sam said and turned right around and sprinted back to where he'd come from. Dean huffed, but followed. "Dean, Ellison said something really worrying," Sam went on, while entering what was, presumably, Ellison's study. "Something about sending the angel of death to find any intruders."

"I thought it was an avenging angel," Dean said, as Sam ran his hand over the bookshelf in Ellison's room. "Oh, come on, don't tell me–"

But Sam pulled aside the right book and reached his hand in to pull a lever, and the bookshelf swung to the side.

"These guys suck," Dean said. Sam didn't deign to reply, and instead just charged on ahead down the secret passageway, aka the rickety wooden staircase down to the root cellar.

And Dean followed, resignedly. At the bottom of the stairs they found Ellison, by the altar, caught red handed and clearly shocked at the turn of events. Sam wasn't even armed, so it was up to Dean to point the gun at him.

"Show me your hands and back up," Dean said. Ellison obeyed, reluctantly, and Dean noticed that the book on the altar was closed

"I don't know who you are," Ellison said, eyeing Sam hatefully as he approached. "But you're too late, I–"

"What did you summon?" Sam interrupted. Ellison blinked, but pressed his mouth shut belligerently. Sam sighed, but instead of insisting, he gingerly opened the book to look at its contents.

"Too late for you, intruder," Ellison said then, and looked right at Dean.

Dean's neck prickled, and he realized that a woman was standing right behind him, where no one had been just a moment earlier.

Too surprised to be scared, he took a step to the side and took her in. She had a neat, black bob and was dressed in a black suit, and before Dean could even say "who the hell are you" she reached out a hand to touch Dean's cheek, and Dean fell to his knees.

* * *

**III.**

* * *

When Dean was eighteen and Sam had just turned fourteen, John had taken his boys to Palo Alto, California on a hunt. A ghost, Dean remembered, haunting a swimming pool and drowning young boys. Sam and Dean were left walking laps around the empty pool to make sure no innocent bystanders would end up hurt while their dad angered the spirit by digging up its bones and burning them, in a graveyard several miles away.

Dean could still remember the chill that had gone through his own bones when the spirit appeared and grabbed hold of Sam. Sam had given a shout, but he'd been pulled into the pool before the sound had even bounced off the tile, and Dean had jumped in the water with his sawed-off shotgun to save him. Stupid, of course — you couldn't shoot a salt round underwater. But while he struggled with the ghost of a man dead seventy-four years for Sam's life, their dad finally put the torch to the skeleton he'd dug up, and Dean had seen the ghost flake into nothingness right there, in the water, and had been able to pull Sam up and out of the pool.

Their dad found them outside, both shivering despite the mild California weather. It was always coldest before dawn, they said.

"You were supposed to keep him safe!" John said, and the disappointment was so much worse than the anger; the anger Dean could handle.

And he did handle the anger; John had chewed Dean out for long enough that Sam had trundled over to the Impala and leaned on the door and said, in a wavering voice, "Dad, let's just go home."

Their home, of course, was just a rundown motel. John had gotten two rooms — one for himself and one for the boys. Before, they had all tended to share a room, with Sam and Dean sleeping head to toe in the other bed, but Sam had recently hit a growth spurt. Dean was eyeing him warily, aware that it wouldn't take much for Sam to outgrow him.

John had said good night, even though the night sky was graying in the east already. Dean had insisted Sam take the first shower, in case the hot water ran out, but there was just enough warm water left that Dean could rinse himself off before wrapping himself in a towel. He'd come out of the bathroom to find Sam sitting on his bed, dressed in dry clothes, but not the pajamas Dean had expected.

"Hey Dean," Sam said. His voice had broken, but could still vacillate into a falsetto when he least wanted it to. Dean loved to make fun of him for it, but he didn't now.

"Yeah, Sam?" Dean said and pulled on a pair of what he hoped was clean underwear before he pulled off his towel to scrub his hair dry.

"Will you help me run away? Just for a few days."

Dean let the towel drop onto his bed. "What? Why?"

Sam wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "It's just, we're kind of close to, um. Stanford University. They have these sort of, orientations? For juniors and seniors who might be thinking of attending."

"Sam, you're barely a freshman," Dean, a proud owner of a fresh high school diploma himself, said, astonished.

Sam looked at him defiantly. "Yeah? And do you think I'll have the chance to go when I'm a senior? Dad would never let me."

Any other time, Dean would’ve laid into Sam for even thinking the thought. But Sam's hair was still wet, and their drying clothes stank of chlorine, and Sam could've died. So Dean just nodded and got dressed.

Together, they wrote a note and left it on Sam's bed. It said they were going on a beach trip for a couple of days, and that they'd be back before the week was out. Dean was fairly certain that John would pick up his trail and be on him about an hour after he woke, but chances were that wouldn't be for some time yet, and the important part was that Sam would have time to scope out that university. Dean's job was to lead their dad on a wild goose chase.

"Alright, kiddo," Dean said when he'd walked with Sam to a bus stop and made sure Sam had food and money in his backpack, and a folding motel map of the city in his hands. "I'll lay down a trail for dad to follow, you go have fun. I'll be back tomorrow morning to pick you up, and we can find dad together."

Sam nodded, determinedly, and Dean had never been so proud of him before. 

Dean remembered the date, 24th of July, because on the way to find a car to steal, his eye caught on a poster with a familiar stenciled font.

LED ZEPPELIN the poster proclaimed over the outline of an angel in either anguish or ecstasy. LIVE IN NORTH AMERICA. Then, slapped on top of it, a sticker with the text OAKLAND 23–24 July

Oakland was only eight hours away, if you took the ferry.

So it came to be that Dean snuck into Led Zeppelin's last live performance in the United States. He didn't know it was going to be their last; nobody knew at the time. It felt like fate in so many ways — before, during, and after. Nothing that happened to Dean, either before or after, would ever take away what it felt like, to be in the middle of a fucking stadium packed with people just screaming with joy at four long-haired Brits playing rock.

Dean found himself screaming too, rapturous in a way he never knew he could be. When they came out, one last time, and he heard the first notes of _Stairway to Heaven,_ Dean realized that tears were spilling down his cheeks. He wiped them away quickly, but no one noticed — or if someone did, they didn't care. Everyone's emotional state was heightened; and for Dean, he experienced a rare sense of complete timelessness. Nothing existed, except himself, right there in that moment.

Afterwards, still high on the experience, he'd aimlessly followed the crowd out of the stadium as they dispersed into various pubs and bars and nightclubs to keep the night going. Dean longed for his night to keep going too, wanted to keep this high going for as long as possible, but he needed to be able to drive, to go get Sam. But when his eyes fell on the glowing neon sign of a tattoo parlor, he decided to go in.

The guy didn't even bat an eye when Dean asked for the outline of the Led Zeppelin angel.

"You're going to want it pretty big, if you want the lines not to smudge," the guy said. He had a bandana around his long hair and was heavily tattooed himself, which Dean found reassuring. "Where do you want it?"

Dean bit his lip and thought about it. He didn't want John to find out — he was going to be in enough trouble as it was, no need to add fuel to the fire. He might be 18, but his dad wasn't going to care about technicalities. Somewhere on his back, he thought, but then again, losing his shirt on a hunt wasn't without precedence. "On my thigh," he said, finally. The guy didn't raise an eyebrow. He just shrugged and told Dean to lose his pants, and Dean did.

The tattoo gun hurt, in a specific and numbing way. But it allowed him to keep his focus on his body, the present, and for that he was grateful. When the tattoo was safely wrapped, and Dean was on his way back to pick up Sam, his hand strayed from the wheel occasionally, to press on the still-sore wound under his jeans, and he felt grounded.

Something similar was happening to him now, at the touch of this strange woman, in this root cellar in Missouri. He knew, rationally, that time was passing, that life was going on around him, but he was completely centered in his own body and his own experience.

Specifically, the experience of bone-searing pain suffusing his entire being.

Dean couldn't move, but he suspected that even if he could, he wouldn't be able to muster up the will. It was the kind of hurt that made you throw up, except Dean was being sapped of all his strength, so even doing that was unthinkable. He blinked, gazing helplessly into the face of the woman who was looking back into his eyes, dispassionately, still touching his cheek.

He tried to open his mouth to speak, but he couldn't. Then the woman blinked and lifted her hand from Dean's cheek.

The pain fell off Dean in sheets, and he pulled in a deep breath. He felt so light all of a sudden, and he got to his feet, ready to tear this woman a new one. But the woman held up a hand quietly and then pointed down.

Dean looked down and saw his own body lying at his feet.

"What the hell?" he said.

"This is what most people call a near-death experience," the woman said. Dean snapped his head back up. She smiled evenly at him.

"I'm dying?" he asked. Behind the woman, Sam and Ellison were frozen in time. They painted a striking tableau, with Sam in the middle of flipping the altar table over, and Ellison reaching for him, mouth open in a soundless scream.

"Everyone is always dying," the woman said. "Technically."

"Okay, lady, who _are_ you?" Dean said. "You're not an angel."

"No," she said with a sigh. "My name is Tessa. I am a reaper."

"Oh," Dean said. He looked at the Sam and Ellison tableau again. "And Ellison set you after me?"

"Yes. Normally, reapers don't kill, we only guide souls. But we can be fettered and made to take a life against our will." Tessa paused and threw a look around her shoulder before she pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "And your brother just set me free. I think I might owe him one."

"Am I going to die? I mean, right now? Is that what this is?" Dean said and gestured between his ghost-form and his collapsed body on the floor.

"No, I'm not quite sure what this is," Tessa said. She frowned and looked a little closer at Dean. "Your soul. It's earmarked for Hell."

"Yeah, thanks, I know," Dean said. "So if you're not going to take my soul, will you let me go?"

"I suppose I must," Tessa said. "I can't promise you'll like it, but you'll live. For now."

In the blink of an eye, Dean was back in his body and drew in another, deep breath after experiencing an acute form of claustrophobia, trapped in flesh where he'd previously been free.

The deafening crash of the altar table hitting the floor, and Ellison's scream, and Dean forced himself up on his feet. Help Sam, take down this goddamn murder cult. The state of his soul wasn't important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The religious pseudo-military organization Sam and Dean take down is based on [the CSA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Covenant,_the_Sword,_and_the_Arm_of_the_Lord), which was a bunch of fucking losers, honestly. That part is historically accurate, according to the wikipedia page, but the timeline of their disbandment is not.  
>   
> When Dean answers Sam on the walkie talkie, he uses CB slang/ten-code, which was popularized by "American singer, activist and politician best known by his stage name C. W. McCall and for his truck-themed outlaw country songs" which is why Sam pokes a little fun at him.


	4. Black Dog

**1986**

* * *

**I.**

* * *

"Dean, come on, we gotta get moving!"

Dean blinked the grit from his eyes and pulled the cover down, just to be assaulted by bright daylight. Sam was standing in the doorway to the motel room, fully dressed and with his hands on his hips.

The covers were pulled further down; not by Dean but by his bedmate. She — here Dean had to admit her name escaped him; as did many other things after the fifth shot of vodka — blinked blearily at Sam too, and Sam made a strangled noise and covered his own eyes.

"What's happening?" she mumbled sleepily, and Dean patted her bird's nest of a hairdo. Her mascara had smudged, but under it she was very cute, and he congratulated himself internally.

"It's my brother," he said, voice gravelly. Why it was, he didn't want to think about. "Sorry sweetheart, I think I have to go."

"That's okay," she said and pulled the covers back over herself. "I'm just going to stay here 'til checkout time."

Dean had swallowed an Advil, thrown water on his face, and gotten dressed in record time. He felt light on his feet, despite the slow, pounding headache that had to be from dehydration, and found Sam leaned on the Impala with a body language that spelled discomfort.

"Aw, come on Sammy," Dean said and clapped him on the shoulder. Sam flinched. "It's a beautiful thing, when a man loves a woman–"

"Save it," Sam said with a huff. "And you reek. I'm going to drive."

Dean could feel the headache deepen with the relentless daylight. He wasn't as young as he once had been. "Alright," he said and passed Sam the keys. "But not a scratch, you hear?"

* * *

"You're unusually quiet," Dean said, when enough time had passed that he was reasonably certain Sam wasn't talking on purpose. Sam gave a grunt, which all but confirmed Dean's suspicions. "Hey come on, Sam. You're still not sore about me taking you to get tattooed?"

It had taken some convincing, on Dean's part, to drag Sam with him to his guy in San Francisco, who specialized in tattooing spellwork. "I can just carry an anti-possession charm, Dean," Sam tried, but Dean shook his head and floored the gas. A charm could be lost, but a tattoo, now that was for life. His own anti-possession tattoo, the neat little pentagram encircled by flames, was nestled high up on his shoulder, edging down onto his clavicle.

Sam had opted to get it tattooed over his heart. Dean threw his head back and laughed, but Sam just scowled at him and said, "If the tattoo is broken there, I'm already dead." Dean stopped laughing, because the logic was sound.

Now Sam drummed his fingers on the wheel and frowned. Dean recognized the frown; it was Sam gearing up to give him a lecture, so he waited.

"It's like you've given up."

Dean blinked. It had not been what he'd expected Sam to say.

"What? Given up on what?"

"This!" Sam said, throwing out one arm as if to encompass the entire world. "Your _life!_ You're– you're drowning yourself in booze and women like it's your last time on Earth!"

"It is my last time on Earth," Dean said, matter-of-fact. "Look, you're not going to find a way to break that deal. If we do, you're–" he made a slicing motion with his hand with an accompanying noise. "–done for, over. Dead again."

"I made that choice, Dean!" Sam said, clenching his fists on the wheel. "I knew what I was doing, but it was worth it, to kill the demon!"

"Well, it wasn't worth it to me, Sam!" Dean snapped. He was leaning his head on his arm braced on the windowsill, sullenly. His mother's silver ring, which he wore on his right ring finger, was digging into his cheek. "And I made a choice too. I'm not going to be the one to bury all my family members!"

"So you're just going to let me do it?" Sam said. "That's unfair!"

"Yeah, well, life's unfair!"

After that outburst, Dean sighed and scrubbed his face, resigned to his fate of having to finally talk it out.

"It's not like I want to die, Sam. But at least it's for a good cause."

"A good– Dean, your _life_ is a good cause!"

"And I'm tired of it!" Dean said, balling his hand into a fist. "I'm tired of all of this — hunting monsters, trying to save people, every damn day. I want out! And you know there's only one way out of a hunter's life, and that's feet first!"

Sam glanced at him, and the open hurt on his face made something clench in Dean's chest. But he'd had almost a year to think about it and he was certain.

"Sam," he said, for once trying to be heartfelt. "That's the only way out for me. But you, you can still go back to Stanford. Or, hell, do whatever you want. Get a wife and a dog. Somehow, you weren't steeped in this like I was. You got out once, you can do it again."

"Dean," Sam said, and the pain was evident in his voice too. "Didn't you ever want to do something else?"

"Oh sure," Dean said, leaning back and arranging his legs comfortably. "You know, I think Ellen's got the right idea. I'd have opened a nice little bar somewhere, have a bunch of fresh limes every day, and a new beer on tap every season."

* * *

**II.**

* * *

"So wait, you called _the Feds_ on them?" Jo said, incredulous. She was looking at Dean over the pint of beer he was nursing, and Dean grinned. Harvelle's was strangely empty this time of year, so Jo had parked herself beside him at the bar, and Ellen seemed content to let her shirk her duties.

"Sam did, after he damn near carried me out of that compound. They had this, can you believe it, fake town where they used to pretend to shoot targets. The FBI was very happy with an anonymous tip giving them the excuse to move in."

"I bet Sam _loved_ doing that," Jo said with a bright laugh and an eyeroll. Dean grinned too, and looked over his shoulder to find the man in question. He was over in the corner, deep in discussion with Ash. Problem solving, Ash had called it. Dean felt the grin slip off his face. Problem solving his inevitable death. His little talk to Sam apparently hadn't stuck.

Jo, quick as a whip, sensed his mood change immediately. "Hey," she said, lowering her voice conspiratorially. "I've got a case."

"Have you? Alright miss, regale me!" Dean threw his arms out, and Jo scowled and hit him on the arm, hard. It was wrong of him to encourage her like this, he knew, but Dean felt protective of her, in a way. If she was busy holding a torch for him, she wouldn't fall into even worse company, he reasoned. He saw the way some of the hunters that frequented Harvelle's looked at her. He knew he'd made several really dumb decisions himself when he was Jo's age.

"It's a haunting," Jo said. She dug out the little notebook she kept for taking people's orders from her back pocket, and she flipped back several pages in it. "In a town just east of the Missouri border. People have been disappearing from the same stretch of road. The authorities never put it together, because it happens only once a year, for forty years"

Dean raised his eyebrows. Apparently she kept more than nacho orders in that notebook.

"Guess you keep more than nacho orders in that notebook," he said. Jo threw him a look, and if looks could kill that one would've carried Dean out of there.

"In 1944, there was an accident, two people dead on the Fourth of July. And then, every year since then, around the end of June, beginning of July, a man and a woman disappear," Jo continued, scanning her notes. "I think it's a death echo. You know, ghosts reliving their death, only these ghosts are taking people with them!"

She looked up, eyes bright. Dean felt something twist in him to see the plain excitement on her face.

"Yeah, I know what a death echo is," Dean said. "Why don't you give me the town name, and me and Sam will go check it out?

Her brightness didn't dim; it hardened. "It's _my_ case," she said and snapped the notebook shut. _"I'm_ going, with or without you."

"You drive a hard bargain, Jo Harvelle," Dean said and took a deep drink of his beer.

Jo cocked her head, smiling impishly. "I mean, it only makes sense for us to go," she said. "You're very pretty, Dean, but you're not a woman, so I don't think you and Sam are going to draw this death echo out."

"We're not– You and me are not going to be bait!" Dean said. "We're going to this town to find the bones of that couple that died in the forties, and— I'm not going to be the one telling your mother!"

* * *

Dean had asked if Sam wanted to join, but he'd declined. He was beat, he said, but Dean knew him well enough to tell that he was hell-bent on finding a way to keep Dean from going to hell, and no run-of-the-mill ghost hunt would deter him. Not with only a month to go.

So Dean was driving with Jo fast asleep in the passenger seat. She'd given him directions on the outset — but not all the way, not even the town name, the goddamn menace still didn't trust him not to dump her on the way and leave her out of the hunt.

He was just about to reach out and shake her awake when blue-red lights flashed in his side view mirror. Cursing under his breath, Dean pulled the car to a stop on the roadside. He glanced at his watch and shook his head. What the hell was a cop doing out and about at five a.m.? 

Dean rolled down the window before he placed both hands on the wheel and waited. He had the sleeves of his flannel rolled down, covering all tattoos, but Dean knew cops would just take any excuse, so he plastered on his most convincing simpering grin when the sheriff came up to the window and, yeah, classic, shone the flashlight right into his eyes. Bastard.

"License, please," the sheriff said, and Dean obediently handed him one. His flashlight slipped off Dean to land on Jo, who was waking up and squinting into it.

"What's going on?" Jo said, and Dean put a hand on her leg, in what he hoped was a comforting gesture but was really only for show.

"It's okay honey," Dean said, with a meaningful emphasis. "Do you mind telling us why you pulled us over, sheriff?"

"That's alright, Mr. Bonham," the sheriff said and returned the flashlight to Dean. "You might want to get your brake light checked. The town's just around the corner, take a left at the intersection. We have a good mechanic, tell him I sent you."

Dean glanced at Jo, who nodded minutely. "I will," Dean said, plastering on a fake grin when he turned back. "Thank you."

"What was that about?" Jo asked as they put the sheriff and his car behind them, and turned left at the intersection. Dean just had a feeling that the sheriff would take up chase if he didn't.

"Don't know," Dean admitted. "But I know there's not a damn thing wrong with the brake light."

"It's almost morning," Jo said and stretched in the seat. "We have an entire day to go through the town records to try and find out where the couple was buried."

Word got around in a place like this, so Dean left the Impala with the mechanic, who recommended a diner down the street. Dean thanked him, and because it was going to be some hours until the registry opened and because it was probably the only diner in town, they went in.

Most of Dean's complaints about small towns like these went out the window by the time he'd put away the bacon and eggs, and the diner waitress, whose name according to the nametag on her checkered shirt was Ruth, set down two plates of apple pie in front of them.

"On the house, sweethearts," Ruth said brightly, blonde hair curling pleasantly around her face as she turned on her heel to wipe off the tables around them. "What are you in town for?"

"Thank you, ma'am!" Dean said and rubbed his hands together. You never looked a free pie in the mouth. "Just passing by, your mechanic is taking a look at our car, the sheriff warned us that there was something wrong."

"Yeah, we're heading up to see family for the fourth of July," Jo said with a bright smile and squeezed Dean's arm. "I'm going to meet his parents for the first time, it's all a bit nerve-wracking!"

"That's lovely!" Ruth said, and Dean had to fake a smile too when all he wanted was to busy himself with the pie.

"Oh man," he said after his first bite. When Ruth had disappeared from earshot, he added, "I don't even care about the ghosts, coming here was worth it just for this pie!"

After Dean's pie was but a memory, and Jo was about halfway through hers, Ruth swanned by again. "Can I refill your coffees?".

"Yes please," Jo said, and Dean nudged his cup closer to the edge of the table too.

"So," Dean said while Ruth was filling them up. "Thanks for the pie. Say, this town seems to be doing well for themselves. Recession didn't hit you too hard?"

"Oh– shoot!" Ruth's hand shook, spilling some of the coffee on the table. "Look at me, old butterfingers–" She smiled at Dean as she mopped it up. "To answer your question, no. We seem to have been quite blessed."

"Hm," Dean said noncommittally with an answering smile, and took a sip of the coffee.

When Jo went to the registry to dig up information on the couple that died in 1944, Dean went back to the mechanic, to see if he was done.

"Brake light’s fixed, but there's something wrong with your brake lines too," the mechanic said. "Could have been serious, but I'll fix her up for you, no extra charge. Might take most of the day though, hope that's okay."

"That's okay," Dean said, and neglected to mention that he kept that car in perfect condition and had gone over the engine not two weeks ago and found it flawless. "Gee, thanks for noticing it!"

When he went to find Jo at the registry office, he had every intention of telling her this place gave him the heebies and the jeebies, but she collided with him in the doorway, and they'd barely righted themselves before she blurted out, "The couple was cremated!"

"Well, damn," Dean said. "Something else tethering them to this world, then?"

"Must be, but I can't figure out what," Jo said and shook her head so her blonde ponytail bounced. "Guess we'll have to keep looking."

But they looked, and they talked to just about everyone in the town — and everyone was so nice, but kept the interactions short, and when dusk was falling and Dean finally went back to the mechanic, the mechanic told him everything was as good as new.

"Great," Dean said, and Jo nudged him with her elbow. He knew the nudge meant 'we've tried everything, now we need to go bait the ghosts to have a chance of figuring out what's going on'.

"I don't like this," Dean said, when they were driving out of town as night fell. "You being bait."

 _"We're_ bait, Dean," Jo said and tapped her foot to the floor impatiently, looking intently at the map in front of her in the fading light. "Doesn't work without the both of us."

"Yeah, but–" Dean said and was interrupted by the car engine sputtering, and then choking to a halt. The fuel gauge pointed at zero. "What the hell?"

"You forget to get gas?" Jo said, laughter in her voice. Dean threw her a look.

"No," he said and reached for the door. "We weren't even halfway to empty when we entered that town."

Something somber flicked over Jo's features. "Dean," she said and got out of the car too. "I think this is the stretch of road."

"Guess the whole being bait thing worked," Dean said and threw up the hood. The engine was pinging and clicking as it cooled down, but the noises were familiar and normal. Dean frowned as he picked out one off-note in the orchestra — a faint gurgling noise.

He pulled up the fuel line — cut off. It was deliberate too; no wear and tear produced such a neat break.

"Jo, this ain't the work of no ghost," Dean said and went to the trunk to get some duct tape to fix it.

He realized Jo hadn't replied, and then he realized she was nowhere to be seen. With a curse, Dean threw the duct tape back in the trunk and pulled out the shotgun instead.

 _"Oh,_ we're _bait, Dean,"_ he muttered angrily to himself in an unfair imitation of Jo's voice as he stepped off the road to try and find her. "She's going to get a piece of my goddamn mind when I find her."

He hadn't gone more than a few steps before he realized he hadn't trampled into a forest, but an orchard; apples, if he wasn't mistaken. The bloom was over; the ground was scattered with decaying white petals, and there was a sour and rotten smell in the air.

"What the hell," Dean said. These parts weren't exactly known for their fruit orchards.

He heard a scream from in between the trees and set off running. Some change in the air made him slow, when the neat rows of apple trees gave way for a clearing around a larger tree; practically ancient, with thick, knotted and cracked bark, and barely any living branches left.

Night had fallen, but he could still make out Jo's blonde hair by the root of the tree, where she was on the ground, leaning against the tree trunk.

"Jo!" he called, and, to his relief, her head snapped up. 

"Dean, watch out!" she called, just before everything went black.

* * *

When Dean came to, he found himself bound to the tree with coarse rope.

"What the hell just happened," he mumbled and tried to move. It was impossible. His head was hurting too, a fierce, throbbing pain that he recognized from being coldcocked more than once.

"Our dear sheriff," Jo said. Dean couldn't see her, but her voice was close, and putting together what he'd seen of her and his own current predicament, he surmised that she, too, was bound to the tree. "And a couple of other guys, couldn't see them clearly."

"But why?" Dean said. He tried to twist, but the rope was digging into him tight enough to cut off circulation.

"They said something about sacrifice," Jo said. She was putting on a brave face, Dean would bet, but her voice wavered a little. _I get it baby girl,_ Dean thought. _Me too._

"It's not unheard of, sacrifice to some, I don't know, pagan demigod," Dean said. "And I just bet you they need it to be a man and a woman. For fertility or some shit. Man, _fuck_ their apple pie."

He heard Jo give a snort. "Alright, cool it Rambo," she said. "I had a knife in my boot, I'm almost free."

"Well, good," Dean said, who sensed another shift in the air and heard a very foreboding sort of rumbling growl reverberate through it. "Jo?"

"Yeah?" she said, sounding strained. Dean heard something snap, a tree branch under a heavy tread.

"You better hurry up."

Whatever this was, 'god' wasn't what Dean wanted to call it. 'Monster' seemed more apt for this hulking, almost sprawling figure looming in the darkness. But Dean supposed that worship could warp almost anything, and though it was futile, he still struggled against his bonds.

"I'm almost–" Jo gave a grunt as Dean felt something give around his chest. He tried again, but there were enough loops around him that he was as stuck as before.

"Jo, you need a wooden stake," Dean said, willing his voice to remain steady. The thing was even closer now, and it had too many limbs. "Stab it through the heart."

"Where am I going to get a wooden stake?" 

"We're in an orchard!" Dean snapped. He imagined he could feel the breath of the thing on his face, heavy and fermented. "Improvise!"

He heard Jo grunt again, and then a loud snap. A large tree branch breaking, maybe. The thing in front of Dean seemed to notice something was amiss, but not quick enough.

Jo gave a fearsome scream and drove the splintered end of a long pole through the demigod, which howled in response and thrashed wildly. Dean had to close his eyes and turn his face away as something hot and corrosive splattered over him.

When he opened his eyes again, Jo was beaming at him. She sawed through the ropes quickly, and Dean could draw in a deep breath for the first time in ages.

"I got it, Dean! I killed it" she said, exaltedly.

"Well," Dean said and looked at the big lump with the stake through it, in between the trees. It was decaying, decomposing right before his eyes, like the apple blossoms littering the grass. "I'd call that a job well done."

They walked back to the car, Dean with the shotgun ready in case any of the townspeople were still about. They weren't, probably too squeamish to actually see the sacrifice take place. How many had they killed over time? How many generations were complicit? And all the punishment they would get was– the lack of godly protection, going forward.

Like the rest of them.

Fixing the fuel line and using the gallon of extra gas Dean kept in the trunk was the work of mere minutes, and soon they were back on the road. Dean was more than ready to put it all behind him, but Jo shifted in the passenger seat, and he could tell she was watching him.

"So," she said. "A fertility sacrifice. You'd think for it to work, we would've had to be– you know."

"Jo," Dean said; a warning.

But she continued. "Oh, come on Dean. I know what you're like. You can have anyone, and you _do._ Why not me?"

"It's _you,"_ Dean said, eyes firmly on the road. "Or, it's not you, I mean, look at me. You deserve better."

"Of course. But don't you think I should be the judge of that?"

"Jo," Dean said, this time pleadingly. "You think you want some bad to the bone type, but you don't. It's never worth the trouble."

"Please, like you're one of the bad ones," Jo scoffed. "Look, if you don't want me, that's fine, but–"

"I'm doomed, Jo!" Dean said, squeezing the wheel so hard his knuckles blanched. "I'm a dead man walking, and you don't need that, and I don't need that. It's no good for either of us."

And that was the whole truth. It was high time Dean faced it.

The rest of the drive, they spent in silence.

* * *

**III.**

* * *

The height of summer came and went, and Dean knew Sam was counting down the days. He tried not to do it himself.

"Dean," Sam said at last, when Dean was staring at a page on Hellhounds in Bobby's library and had been for a good while _. A demonic dog of hell, come to fetch the souls of the damned._ "I think I might have a way to get you out of that deal."

"We've talked about this, Sam!" Dean said and slammed the book shut. "If I go back on the deal, you die, and I won't let that happen!"

"What if we killed the demon who holds all the deals?" Sam said. Dean stilled.

"How would we even– we don't know who that demon is!"

"I do," Sam said, quietly. Dean stared. His body language was all wrong; when Sam found something out, he was jubilant, or proud. Not– whatever this was. "When you went on that hunt with Jo? I found out the name of the Queen of the Crossroads– it's Lilith."

"What? And you're only telling me now?" Dean felt the anger well up inside him, but he took a deep breath and willed it to subside. "How do we find her?"

"We let her find us," said an unfamiliar voice. Dean turned around and locked eyes with a woman who was standing just outside the door to the library. She looked, if Dean wanted to be uncharitable, a lot like if Jo had an evil twin. "Hi Sam. Dean, pleased to meet you."

"Dean, this is Ruby," Sam said reluctantly.

"Could you please scratch out this devil's trap so I can get in?" Ruby said and gestured to the mat she was standing on, which covered an elaborately painted pentagram.

She looked up and her eyes turned pitch black, and Dean was out of his chair and halfway to the holy water before Sam had managed to get a hand on his shoulder and asked him to listen.

* * *

"I get that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Sam," Dean said, in a low voice. "But she's a _demon!"_

Ruby had gone into the abandoned barn to prepare for the summoning of Lilith. Sam and Dean were still outside. Arguing across the roof of the Impala.

"I know she is!" Sam hissed back. "Why do you think I didn't tell you before I absolutely had to? But she saved my life, Dean. Which, in case you didn't know, is something the two of you have in common."

"Don't equate me selling my soul for you to this valley girl yanking your ass out of the fire on– what, a reconnaissance mission? Fuck that," Dean said and crossed his arms.

"She wants Lilith dead, we want Lilith dead," Sam said. He twirled the demon blade in his hand. "And we've got the knife to make it happen. Come on, Dean."

"Well, okay," Dean said and threw his hands up. Silently he had to concede Sam's point; they were fresh out of other options. Come midnight, Dean was going to be Hell's bitch unless they could kill Lilith. "But don't come crying to me when she double-crosses you!"

Sam gave Dean a long-suffering, exasperated look, and Dean made a face back at him.

And when Sam turned to walk over to the barn, Dean used the butt of his Colt to knock him out cold. Though he braced himself, he could barely hold Sam's collapsed weight, and stuffing him into the backseat of the car left Dean more out of breath than he wanted to admit.

"I'm sorry, Sam," he muttered as he closed the door against Sam's long legs. "No way am I putting you in harm's way again."

He picked up the knife where Sam had dropped it, put it in his jacket pocket and strode into the barn.

"Alright, boys!" Ruby said from the far end of the barn. "Or boy. We're all set for the summoning. Where's Sam?"

"I think this is a stupid idea," Dean said and pulled out the knife. "And I'm not putting Sam in danger. But it's the only plan we've got, so let's do it."

Ruby pursed her lips but then began the summoning spell, chanting low but steady. Dean felt acutely unprotected, with only a bottle of holy water and a knife between him and, presumably, the Queen of the Crossroads.

Ruby finished the spell, and absolutely nothing happened.

"Well, worth a try," Dean said, swallowing down the bitter taste that wanted to rise in his throat.

"You think this little trap would hold me?" Ruby said then. The cadence of her voice was off, and when Dean and her gaze locked, overlaid, he could see her demonic face – an indescribable, swirling mess of teeth and glowing white eyes and darkness. His stomach twisted at the sight.

"Lilith," he said.

"Dean," she said, and without looking at it, she stretched out a hand and yanked the knife from Dean's hand, from several feet away. "I hope you've said your goodbyes, I have my hounds out for you as we speak."

As a reflex more than anything else, Dean threw holy water at her. The water hissed and evaporated as it came in contact with her, but unlike other demons, it didn't hurt her. She didn't even flinch. Dean's heart would've sunk if it wasn't already at his ankles.

"Well, I'll be seeing you around downstairs," Lilith said. "But now that I'm here, I might stick around. I guess I should say thanks!"

And then, just as quickly as she had appeared, she was gone. And Dean was all alone in the barn, with the clock nearing midnight.

Dean walked over to the knife and picked it up. He'd known all along that they didn't stand a chance, so why did this hurt so fucking much? Why did he feel like he was drowning, all of a sudden?

He couldn't breathe, so he threw the doors of the barn open. The Impala sat unmoved on the grass, and Dean left the knife on the passenger side seat. He didn't look at Sam's unconscious body as he closed the door and put his hand on the roof of the car, to steady himself.

Out here, the night sky was studded with stars so bright Dean felt almost breathless when he craned his neck to look up at them.

He had a girlfriend, a long time ago when Sam was at Stanford, and Dean and John had stayed in a Louisiana town for the summer to solve a case. She had liked to stargaze, Dean's girlfriend had, and Dean went happily, for the opportunity of a roll in the hay-to-be. But afterwards, grass scratching his bare back, she had pointed out the constellations to him. "That's Sirius, the dog star," she had said, when dawn was hinting at gold on the horizon. "It's part of the Canis Major constellation, and it's the brightest star in our system."

That star was nowhere to be seen as the clock struck midnight, and Dean heard a bone-chilling howl go up.

* * *

**Exitlude**

* * *

"You again," Dean said. "Don't tell me I'm having another near death experience."

Tessa only blinked at him. "No, Dean, you're already dead," she said. "This is, for lack of a better word, a dream."

"Oh good," he said. "But what the hell are you doing in my dreams?"

"I was asked to do a favor," Tessa said with a shrug. "And I've done it. Goodbye."

And she was gone before Dean could even say anything.

He looked around in his dream — it was a familiar one; he had dreamed it before. It was the one time John took them fishing, to one of those scenic little lakes up in Michigan, and Dean caught his first and only fish. John had been so proud of him; he showed Dean how to fillet the fish, take out the bones. Dean hadn't known knives could be used for this kind of stuff. Dean was maybe twelve, Sam was mostly interested in gathering rocks and shells by the shoreline.

Dean's memory of the place was filled with these kinds of details. In this dream, though, he was grown up and all alone on the jetty. He saw the fishing rod laid down on it, waiting to be used.

He was just about to pick it up when he realized he wasn't alone on the jetty after all.

"Oh good, another reaper," Dean said, exasperated. He didn't like that his dreams were haunted like this; his waking moments were haunted enough, with Sam scowling worriedly at him when he wasn't buried in a book.

The person, a man, though try as he might, Dean couldn't quite make out the face, shook his head. "I'm no reaper, Dean," he said with a deep voice.

Even if he couldn't see his face, or even describe what he was wearing, Dean thought he looked calm; regal in a weird way. Dean knew this the way you just know things in dreams. What he said was, "Great, more interdimensional beings who are on a first name basis with me. Awesome."

Something about this whole thing was making him shiver, in a strange mixture of trepidation and awe. Dean didn't much care for it.

"It doesn't have to be this way," the man said, imploringly. "Your soul — it's still yours."

"What do you know about my soul?" Dean demanded. The subject is a little sore, thank you very much.

"Please, try to hold out," the man said. "I'm coming to save you."

"Save me?" 

It was the middle of the day, but when Dean looked past the man that he couldn't quite make out, he could see the entire Milky Way behind him, a bright wound in the sky, painted in stars and purples and deep blues.

Dean realized why it was so strange that he was dreaming. He was in Hell.

And just as he realized this, he woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wikipedia: "The dog days or dog days of summer are the hot, sultry days of summer. They were historically the period following the heliacal rising of the star system Sirius, which Greek and Roman astrology connected with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs, and bad luck."  
> Me: nice


	5. Fool in the Rain

**Prelude**

* * *

Hell was metaphysical, Dean was pretty sure. He could see it in the faces of the demons that taunted him– the remnant of whatever face they had had when they were humans, before their long road to ruin, grotesquely mixed with their demonic form. Their shapes were metaphysical, just like Dean's body had to be metaphysical.

Being metaphysical didn't help Dean much. His body didn't know it was metaphysical, and it hurt a whole goddamn lot to be spreadeagled on a rack, arms and legs restrained with cold metal. He was wearing jeans and a shirt because if he was naked, the demons wouldn't get to strip him down. They were big on humiliation down here.

"Good morning, Dean," Alastair crooned as he leaned in. His demonic face was elongated and several sharp fangs protruded from his lower jaw. He traced a claw down Dean's cheek and throat in a cruel imitation of tenderness, and then dipped into his clavicle to tear through his shirt. Despite himself, Dean flinched from the rush of cold air over his skin.

"A new day, same as yesterday," Alastair went on, in that sing-song way of his, while he let his hand wander over his array of instruments, each and every one of which he'd used on Dean many times over. He picked a knife with a serrated edge and a pronounced gutter. Red light glinted off the metal.

"Unless–" Here Alastair paused for the usual, dramatic effect. He leaned back in close, and his sulphuric breath washed over Dean's face. Dean did his best not to retch. "Unless, Dean, you want to pay it forward. If you pick up this knife–"

"I'm going to save you some time," Dean said and clenched his hands into fists. "Eat me."

Alastair's face split over a sharp grin. "Well, alright, I will!" he said and lifted the knife.

Dean closed his eyes.

* * *

**1986**

* * *

**I.**

* * *

Dean woke up. It was a real waking up; the breath he drew in was real. The smell of rotting wood and dirt was real. He blinked. The darkness pressing down on him did not change.

When he reached out a hand, he touched wood. In a blind panic, of which he remembered very little afterward, he clawed his way through the rotten boards and through the dirt, hoping against hope he was clawing upward instead of down, and then — then his hands breached the surface and he worked frantically to heave himself up and out of the suffocating darkness.

He lay there for a while, just drawing in breath after breath of fresh air. He realized, after a while, that a small drizzle of rain was pattering around him, and he turned over on his back and parted his lips. His mouth felt dry, his skin felt like it would crack if he moved.

Dean knew, in the abstract way you knew you had to eat and piss and sleep to be able to live, that he had to try and remember how he ended up here. But instead of trying to remember, he pushed himself to his feet and looked around. He was surrounded by felled trees under an iron gray sky.

Some weird sort of homing instinct made him start to walk toward the road, before he'd fully registered there was a road beyond the mass of felled trees. A logging site, his brain supplied, before he realized these trees hadn't been chopped down but rather pulled up, roots and all. When he set foot on the road and looked back, he realized the trees hadn't been pulled either — they'd been blasted down, by an impact centered on where Dean had crawled out of the earth. 

His personal little Tunguska event in the middle of– he didn't even know which state.

So Dean picked a direction and started to walk down the road. While he walked he realized he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, dirtied by the earth he'd crawled out from, but no shoes. The asphalt was wonderfully cool from the rain under the soles of his feet.

And as he walked, one step after the other, Dean tugged up his t-shirt and pressed his palm to the smooth planes of his stomach. Just to make sure he still had a body.

He had no idea how much time passed before he came upon a gas station by the side of the road. There was a car beside it, but the station itself was empty.

Padding over the cold tile to the dirty bathroom behind the counter made something uncomfortable crawl over Dean's spine. Why was it empty? It was the middle of the day. Or at least he thought it was.

When he looked into the bathroom mirror, he had to touch his own face like he had touched his body, to make sure it wasn't torn to shreds by Hellhounds.

But it had been. That Dean could remember without even trying. Teeth piercing his flesh and producing rivers of too-hot blood, claws ripping his skin open, spilling out his innards. He shivered and pressed his fingers into his cheeks hard enough to leave white indents behind.

It  _ looked  _ like him in the mirror. Green eyes, freckles over the bridge of his nose that had been broken in a fight when he was fifteen. A mouth that landed him in trouble more often than not; sinful, some people had told him it was, sometimes covetously but never kindly. Hair the color of roadside dirt, cut in the same Ivy League hairstyle he'd had for years.

He lowered his gaze and looked at his arms. The black blocks of his warding tattoos; the script on the inside of his lower left arm, spelling out the Latin chant for exorcising demons. It was all there, every tattoo he'd ever gotten, except– the ink seemed fresh, the older ones that had faded to blue were darker than he remembered. He trailed his right hand up the text and across the soft crease of his elbow.

Something throbbed on his shoulder, much like a block tattoo that had just been finished, and Dean carefully peeled back the sleeve of the t-shirt to reveal a huge, red welt. Dean frowned and turned his shoulder to look at it in the mirror, and yep, that was an unmistakable hand print.

"What the fuck," Dean said, or tried to. His voice cracked and his breath fell short. He turned from the mirror to find something to drink.

While Dean emptied a water bottle from the cooler in front of the register, he inspected the newspapers in the stand. South Central Illinois local news, so he had a place. The date, to his shock, was February 9, 1986. 

Dean looked at the phone behind the registry too. He could try calling Bobby, or Harvelle's. But none of them would believe him. So he grabbed a bag of nuts, some beef jerky, another water bottle and a pack of cigarettes, and went out to steal the car.

* * *

**II.**

* * *

Introducing himself to Bobby after the two-day drive up to South Dakota went something like this: duck shotgun blast, tolerate a faceful of holy water, and offer to pull a silver blade across his own arm to prove he wasn't some kind of monster.

Dean had to admit, as Bobby gave him a rag to press to the wound, that it was quite a relief to prove it to himself too. 

"Any idea where Sam is?" Dean asked, when Bobby begrudgingly put on a pot of coffee. "I need to find out–"

"Wasn't him that pulled you out," Bobby said. His moustache twitched sadly. "Believe you me, he tried everything. Nothing worked, and tell you the truth, I was relieved. I helped him bury you — refused a hunter's pyre, Sam did, and I thought nothing good was gonna come of it. You were mince meat, Dean."

"Gee, thanks for that comparison," Dean said, but something uncomfortable twisted in his gut. If Sam hadn't been the one to drag him out of Hell and restore his body, what had?

Bobby seemed to read his thoughts. "Let me put you in touch with a psychic," he said and pulled out a couple of mugs. "She's good, she can find out just about anything. Oh, and I have your car out back. Sam wouldn't touch it, but I thought it'd be a shame to let her go to waste."

* * *

The car he'd stolen had been a stick shift: being back in the Impala, Dean could sit back and take his first, relaxed breath since he'd crawled out of the earth. The familiar smell of the leather and the feel of the wheel under his hands, the smooth purr of the engine as he gave the gas pedal a nudge.

This car was as much home as they had ever known. How Sam could have left her behind, Dean didn't know. How he would even find Sam, he didn't know. They'd had several ways of finding each other back in the day, if they ever got separated, but Sam didn't know to look for Dean, and all Dean could do was ask every hunter he knew to keep a lookout, and be in contact if they heard anything.

The United States of America was nothing if not large. Endless, some might say, though Dean had driven coast to coast and back again during his life. But finding someone who didn't want to be found was damn near impossible. Dean pressed his lips flat and pressed down on the gas as the highway opened up before him.

* * *

Pamela Barnes opened the door to Dean's knock and smiled at him. Dean gaped for a second. Bobby had said she was good, not that she was show-stoppingly gorgeous.

"Welcome, Dean," she said ushered him in when he introduced himself. "Will you let me look at you?"

Dean let her touch his face with cool fingers. Pamela traced his features with a clinical efficiency, which Dean thought was a shame, because not only was she show-stoppingly gorgeous, she was also very much Dean's type; dressed in an Iron Maiden tank top and torn jeans. If Dean hadn't been trying to find out if whatever had gotten him out of Hell was going to get buyer's remorse soon, he would've asked her if she had a favorite drink and if she would let him buy one for her.

"Oh, from what I can tell you're very good-looking Dean, but I don't have time for dating either," Pamela said, and Dean was jerked out of his thoughts.  _ Fucking psychics! _ But Pamela just laughed and asked him to sit down by her kitchen table.

At the table, Pamela looked Dean in the eyes, which Dean thought was quite the feat for a blind person. "Did the thing that raised you leave anything behind?"

"I mean, me," Dean said with a shrug. "But there's this, I dunno, mark on my shoulder? Looks like a handprint. Ruined my Blue Öyster Cult tattoo." He tugged off his flannel shirt and pulled up his t-shirt sleeve and helped guide Pamela's right hand to his shoulder.

"Oh, hmm," Pamela said with a grin as she squeezed his deltoid. "Maybe I should let you buy me that drink after all."

It was Dean's turn to laugh, and he obediently grabbed Pamela's left hand when she indicated it. It felt strange, to have her cool hand pressing down on the still throbbing welt on his shoulder. It felt wrong.

"Alright, let's look inward," Pamela said, and Dean closed his eyes. He didn't particularly want to look in that direction; there were a lot of flashing red lights warning him to stay away. Do not open this can of worms. "You who raised Dean Winchester from Hell, reveal yourself."

"That's all?" Dean murmured. "Damn, I might've tried that one myself."

"Hush," Pamela said, but there was a hint of laughter in her admonition. "You who raised Dean Winchester from Hell, reveal yourself."

Dean resisted the urge to fidget. It all felt very anticlimactic and unmagical, sitting in Pamela's well-lit kitchen in early dusk. 

"You who raised Dean Winchester from Hell, reveal yourself." Nothing happened, and then Pamela, in a conversational tone said, "Hello, Castiel. Won't you show yourself to us? We both know we're no threat to you."

Dean opened his eyes. Pamela's unseeing eyes were visible under her lowered lashes but nothing had changed. "Castiel?" he said. Pamela blinked and raised her chin.

"He's coming here," she replied and let her hand slide off Dean's shoulder.

"Here? What is he? A demon?" Dean said and shrugged his shirt back on.

"No, not a demon," Pamela said and rubbed her own knuckles with her thumb. "Something entirely else, Dean. I've never felt something so powerful in my life."

"More powerful than a demon, figures," Dean muttered. In that case he needed to get some stuff from the trunk.

But no sooner had he thrown open Pamela's front door than had Pamela rushed after him and told him to stop. "Dean, he's already here."

And with a start, Dean realized there was someone standing at the far end of Pamela's overgrown little garden, backlit by the streetlight, beside the Impala. "Hey!" Dean barked. "Don't touch her!"

That someone started to walk closer. The hair on the back of Dean's neck stood up and some lizard brain part of him wanted to turn tail and run; why, he couldn't understand. It was just a guy in a tan trenchcoat that was too large for him, and he walked closer at an unhurried but determined pace.

But as Dean watched, carefully placing himself in front of Pamela, he sensed something about the man, something that billowed out behind his trenchcoat and superimposed his face. It wasn't just a man, it was something huge, spanning both space and a dimension Dean couldn't comprehend. It wasn't the face of a man, it was three faces at once. Pamela drew in an audible breath and grabbed Dean's arm for support. Maybe she could perceive what Dean only sensed.

Dean, who had literally stared death in the face, became breathless with fear at this approaching figure. He balled his hands into fists, because no matter how scared he was, he wouldn't go out without a fight, and he wouldn't let Pamela be hurt for something he'd dragged out.

"Dean," Pamela said in warning. "This is way above my paygrade. We should–"

But she never finished her sentence. She collapsed against Dean with a sigh, and horrified, Dean caught her unconscious body.

"What did you do to her?" he demanded and set her down, gently. She was still breathing, but that didn't have to mean anything.

"I thought we better talk in private," the man said. His voice was dark and gravelly, as somber as a wake, and it rasped down Dean's spine and made him shiver. "She's only sleeping."

Dean looked up and blinked, and the man was just a man, standing a foot away and looking at Dean like he was a puzzle. He was a little shorter than Dean, with tousled black hair, and under the open trenchcoat he wore what looked like a cheap suit and a blue tie.

"Castiel?" Dean said. It was a strange and unfamiliar name, uncomfortable on his tongue, but the man tilted his head in recognition.

"Yes," he said. "I thought you would remember me. I'm the one who went to Hell in search of you." 

Looking at him, Dean thought of the man by the jetty in his dream, and Dean realized it had been none other than Castiel himself. His shoulder throbbed in time with his pulse. "What are you?"

"I'm an angel of the Lord, Dean." And as if to prove it, Castiel unfurled his wings. The massive black shadows outlined by a fuzzy halo of yellow streetlight stretched and quivered behind him, the shape of them unmistakable but the size unfathomable.

Dean refused to shrink back. He squared his shoulders instead. "Alright, I'll bite. Say that you are what you say you are — why would an angel come looking for me in Hell?"

"Because you deserved to be saved, Dean." 

Dean scoffed. Castiel tilted his head again, like a bird. This close Dean could make out the color of his eyes; they were a deep, electric blue.

"If you can't believe that," Castiel continued, raising his chin just a little without breaking eye contact. Dean felt naked under his piercing gaze. "Then believe that it was because God commanded it, and because we have a mission for you."

"If you are an almighty angel, then surely you don't need a schmuck like me to run your errands," Dean said, even though his heart was beating fast enough to jump out his throat.

It was Castiel's turn to square his shoulders and straighten his back. "Don't take that tone with me, boy," he said, calm and imperial like the sea. "Go find your brother and do as you are told."

Castiel reached out a hand, and even though Dean flinched, he still pressed two fingers to his forehead. Dean knew, suddenly and immediately, where to find Sam.

And then the sound of fluttering wings, the cool rush of air to fill a suddenly empty space, and Castiel was gone.

Pamela gasped awake beside him, and Dean busied himself with helping her upright. 

_ I thought you would remember me,  _ Castiel had said. And Dean remembered choking on brimstone and fear, half-mad with pain and anger, and he remembered a hand, a bright white hand, gripping him tight. 

* * *

**III.**

* * *

He found Sam in a seedy motel in Iowa, just before sunrise.

"It's really me," Dean said resignedly at Sam's dumbfounded look. "Please don't throw holy water in my face, I'll take a drink of it if you want, just don't–"

"Dean," Sam interrupted and reached across the threshold to pull Dean into a big, firm hug. Dean hugged him back and had to swallow down tears. Finding Sam whole and healthy and alive had seemed like more than he could've hoped for. "Dean," Sam repeated and then held him out at arm's length to look at him. "How– when? How are you alive?"

Sam was crying openly, fat tears spilling silently down his cheeks, and Dean hated that he was the reason for them. He tried to smile. "Well, he said he was an angel, but I'm not so sure."

Sam's mouth fell open. "An angel– dude!" he said, genuine excitement coloring his voice even through the tears.

Dean threw a thumb over his shoulder. "So, you know, I figured we'd better head to Bobby's and read up. Your favorite activity."

Sam threw his head back and laughed, and it was the best sound Dean had heard in — well, a long time.

As they drove, Sam stopped beaming long enough to ask, "Hey, how'd you find me?"

"Oh," Dean said with a sigh, squinting into the sun that reflected off the asphalt. "I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that."

* * *

"Sam, Dean," Bobby said when they showed up at his doorstep. "We, um, might have a problem."

The problem turned out to be Bobby's wife Karen, dead fifteen years back. Except Karen Singer was presently dressed in a yellow dress and an apron and in Bobby's kitchen baking pies. The smell had permeated the air all the way out in the foyer.

"What the hell, Bobby?" Dean hissed. Sam was peering into the kitchen, carefully, like he might set off a bomb if he moved too suddenly.

"I don't know!" Bobby hissed back. "You turn up back from the dead, and next thing I know Karen is knocking on my door too!"

"You also splash her with holy water?" Dean asked, a little hurt. Like this was his fault. "Shoot her with rock salt?"

"She's my  _ wife," _ Bobby said, anguished. "And I know she's not possessed by a demon this time. I think she might just be back. From the dead."

"Is it your angel, do you think?" Sam said, going up on his toes to spy on Bobby's wife.

"He's not  _ my–  _ we don't even know if he  _ is  _ an angel!" Dean replied, and apparently, didn't keep his voice low enough, because Karen popped her head out of the kitchen and scared the daylights out of all three of them.

"Anyone want pecan pie? I think it's cooled down enough to eat now."

When Ellen called and Bobby picked the phone up in the kitchen, it wasn't even a surprise to hear her say that her husband was back.

_ "Oh, Dean's back too?" _ she said over the line, loud enough for the rest of them to hear.  _ "Jo will be over the moon, I'm sure. I think she has a few choice words for him." _

"We think Dean was the first," Bobby said. Dean was busy eating pecan pie by the kitchen table, and only gave Bobby a thumbs up. Karen was still working by the stove and didn't mind them talking shop in the kitchen. Nevermind that "shop" entailed the fact that she was back from the dead. Bobby put the phone down and sighed deeply.

"Is everyone killed by demons coming back? Is that the common denominator?" Sam said and pulled both hands through his hair that had grown even longer in Dean's absence. "God. Does that mean– could dad come back?"

A piece of pecan nearly went down the wrong hole. Dean coughed, emphatically, and both Bobby and Sam looked at him meaningfully. The thought hadn't crossed his mind, but now that it had, he didn't know how to feel.

"Well,  _ I  _ don't know," he said, voice hoarse from coughing. "Why are you looking at me?"

"Because you're the only one here who walked with an angel, sonny," Bobby said firmly. "What did he say to you, anyway?"

"To follow orders," Dean said and made a face. "Only the bastard didn't even give me any. Just told me where to find Sam and then–" He mimed flapping wings with his hands. "–vamoosed!"

Behind them, a crash. Dean jumped to his feet, and Bobby and Sam both rushed to Karen's side where she had collapsed in convulsions.

_ "The first seal has been broken, and He will rise again," _ she chanted, again and again in a voice that sounded very little like the Karen who had insisted Dean take a second serving of pie. Dean watched helplessly as Sam grabbed her legs and Bobby cradled her head in his lap and held both her arms as she thrashed around.  _ "The first seal has been broken, and He will rise again!" _

And then, just as suddenly as she had collapsed, she stilled. Sam let go of her legs, and Bobby gingerly felt for a pulse in her throat. He looked up and nodded at Dean, who let out a loud sigh and put both hands to his head.

"What the hell is going on?" he said.

And in an ironic answer, he heard the fluttering of feathers, the flap of invisible wings, and Castiel was standing before them, still dressed in a suit and trenchcoat. Sam reeled back, clearly shocked, and Bobby cursed out loud, but Castiel didn't seem to even notice them. He looked right at Dean and said, "The Witnesses have been raised."

"The Witnesses?" Bobby said, and then gave a shout.

Dean looked away from Castiel to see Karen with a bread knife in hand aim right for her husband's jugular.

Before Dean could react, Castiel reached out his hand and Karen dropped the knife and then dropped down on the floor herself. Dean flinched; they had all seen enough death to know when it occurred, and Karen Singer had no life left in her body.

Bobby still gathered her back into his lap, quietly, and said nothing.

"I put her soul to rest," Castiel said, and sounded maybe even a little sorry, if Dean was willing to give him the benefit of doubt. "She never should have been disturbed. It was always going to end violently."

After a horrible, silent moment, Sam said, "Oh God. Ellen," and rushed over to the phone to hit the star key.

Two, three, four long dial tones they had to wait, both Sam and Dean breathless with worry, before someone picked up. "Ellen?" Sam said, and then shut up and listened. "Yeah," he said then, wearily. "Here too. I'm so sorry. Sorry. I'll– We'll get back to you."

He hung up and looked at Dean. His face was the picture of distress. "She says Bill tried to kill her too. She, um, she had to shoot him. Point blank, in the head. The only thing he said was, 'the Devil will return.' Um."

And Dean looked to Castiel, who, to his surprise, also looked distressed. Distress looked different on him though, carved deep into the straight lines of his features as he looked at Karen's body in Bobby's lap.

"I'll say it again," Dean said, willing his voice not to waver. "What the hell is going on?"

Castiel raised his eyes to meet Dean's gaze. "The demon Lilith rose the two Witnesses, which has broken the second seal. We must stop her from breaking more."

"Seals, what  _ seals?" _ Sam interrupted. Castiel turned to look at him, slowly and incredulously.

"The seals that lock Lucifer in the Cage," Castiel said, patiently. "The demons want to break the Devil out, to bring about the End of Days."

"You mean the Apocalypse," Bobby said. He sounded resigned.

"The Apocalypse, Armageddon, whatever you like to call it," Castiel conceded. "If we don't stop Lilith, the world will end."

The silence that fell in Bobby's kitchen was charged. Dean looked from Bobby to Sam to Castiel.

"Super," he said and threw his hands up. "Why is this– I mean, is this going to keep coming back to us?"

Castiel did that head tilt that seemed to be his go-to move. "You have a Heaven-sanctioned purpose, Dean," he said. "Surely, stopping the end of the world is a worthy cause even for you?"

"So you're saying we're on a mission from God now?" Dean shot back. "Why the hell doesn't God just, I don't know, put a cork in it Himself? Why do we have to be the one to clean up His mess?"

Castiel stretched himself up to his full height, and again, Dean could sense his wings unfold behind him, heedless of the house around them.  _ Someone  _ wanted to throw their weight around a little.

"Take some responsibility," Castiel said disdainfully. "After all, you were the one to break the first seal."

And with that little bombshell dropped, Castiel vanished, leaving behind only the smell of cold, winter air and a horrible sense of foreboding.

* * *

They gave Karen a hunter's funeral. Bobby insisted on putting the torch to the pyre himself, but afterwards, Sam and Dean were the ones to gather up her ashes and interred them under an elm tree in Bobby's back yard.

Sam made a sympathetic face at Dean and wandered off to grab something from his car. Dean squared his shoulders and went back into Bobby's kitchen, which still smelled of pie. Dean smelled of smoke and ashes, and he felt very self-conscious when he sat down opposite Bobby, who was staring out of the kitchen window silently. 

He had so many thoughts churning in his brain, turning his stomach queasy, that he didn't know which one to pick. He didn't have to; before long, Bobby shifted and gave a loud sigh.

"She made a cherry pie as well," he said, without looking at Dean. "Is it weird if I put it in the freezer for a rainy day?"

"No, Bobby," Dean said. His voice felt raw. "I think that's just fine. I mean, if we can't have a pie at the end of this, then what the hell would it all be for?"

Bobby smiled at that, a quick, sad smile. Dean smiled back, or tried to. It was hard, when all he could think now was that by all rights, he should've been out there on a pyre too.


	6. Trampled Under Foot

* * *

**I.**

* * *

"Okay, so there are over a thousand possible seals, and Lilith only needs to break sixty-six of them for Lucifer to walk free," Sam said and scratched the back of his head. He refused to get his hair cut, even though Dean offered to do it for him. He'd been cutting his own since he was old enough to hold his dad's clippers.

"And we have no idea which ones she's gunning for," Dean filled in. For once he had both hands on the wheel, and he was glad for the talk. It kept him awake. 

Sam sighed, loudly and leaned his head on the windowpane of the passenger seat. "No," he agreed. "I don't know, I mean, we could try asking Castiel. He does seem helpful."

"Yeah, real helpful," Dean scoffed and deftly maneuvered the Impala around a pothole in the road. They were on the way back from some backwaters town in Indiana where they had exorcised two demons, but not before the demons in question had managed to kill their hosts, thus leaving two bodies in their wake.  _ So much for the angelic heads up,  _ Dean thought sourly.

In April, a nuclear power plant had gone up in a Soviet state and rained radioactive waste over large swathes of northern Europe. A couple had held a bunch of kids hostage in an elementary school in Idaho and then murdered 64 of them, and then themselves. A planted bomb in Melbourne, Australia. Castiel had told them that the angels were fighting Lilith's hordes with all their might, but the goddamn demons still managed to stir the pot all over the fucking place.

The headlights flashed an exit ramp sign and Sam shifted in his seat.

"Let's get off and find something to eat," he said. "I'm starving. And I need to pee."

"Really? Well, alright," Dean said, feeling a weird sort of nostalgia for their youth, when Sam had been relegated to the back seat and used to set similar demands. He obediently shifted the Impala over a lane. "But you're getting me an extra large fries."

* * *

When Sam got out of the car to go get fries from a rundown little truckstop, Dean put his Steppenwolf mixtape into the deck and blasted it at full volume, loud enough that Sam, already two paces away from the car, jumped.

Dean grinned and gave him the finger when Sam scowled at him through the windshield. It really was the small joys in life.

He leaned back and lowered the volume, to make himself comfortable while he waited. He might even try to get a little nap in, to be able to drive through the night. He was used to that sort of thing.

You could get used to all sorts of things, Dean mused. But he sure as hell wasn't used to angels showing up unannounced whenever they were the least welcome. 

"Hello, Dean."

"Don't remember inviting you into my car," Dean said conversationally, even though his heart was racing and his palms felt uncomfortably damp from the rush of adrenaline. Castiel, who now occupied the passenger side seat, reached out a hand to touch the cassette deck.

"Curious," Castiel said. "That humans choose to record and save music. That you find worth in the replica of a song and not only in the singing."

"Okay," Dean said slowly. It was always strange to see Castiel, an otherworldly creature, interacting with the world. "Did you pop down here out of, what, anthropological interest?"

It was also strange to see Castiel shrug off whatever reverie he was in, to rustle into something like a military posture when he turned his face to look at Dean.

"No," he said. "If you were to apprehend Lilith as you are, you would be no match for her."

"Oh, thanks." Dean said drily and shifted to better be able to look at the angel. He was wearing the same suit and trenchcoat as always, and Dean wondered about it. And because he had next to no brain-to-mouth filter he asked, "Hey, why the G-man get-up?

There it was, the patented head tilt that signified that Castiel found Dean's words incomprehensible. "The suit and coat," Dean clarified with a gesture. "How come this is how you want to look?"

"Want?" Castiel said and looked down at his own lap. "This is a vessel, Dean. I did not choose to look like this."

"A vess– you're  _ possessing  _ someone?" Dean said, unable to keep the genuine horror out of his voice.

Castiel looked back up at him with a frown. "No," he said firmly. "We ask the consent of the human who wishes to aid us. Without it, we cannot walk the earth."

"Yeah? And can the human opt out when it gets to be too much?" Dean said and flicked his eyes up and down Castiel's  _ vessel _ . Whoever he was, Dean doubted he had much to do with any of the mannerisms he was exhibiting. He might be inhabiting a human, but Castiel wasn't human.

Castiel paused for a moment and blinked. "No," he said again, this time softer. "I suppose they aren't given that chance, not unless I — or we — make the effort."

Not for the first time, Dean wondered what Heaven was like. If it was at all anything like Hell, if just by dint of being a metaphysical place housing metaphysical beings, then what sort of beings would it create?

"Alright," Dean said and smacked his hands against the steering wheel. "Well, you said you came down to help us with Lilith, didn't you?"

"There is a weapon that was made a long time ago," Castiel said, switching gears as quickly as Dean. "There are only five creatures in God's creation it cannot kill. It's called The Colt."

By the time Sam came back, Castiel had already vanished as suddenly as he had arrived.

"We're going to Colorado," Dean said when Sam settled in. "Going to find a special gun that can kill Lilith."

"Oh, okay," Sam said and moved the greasy paper bag around on his lap. "The angels radioed in again?"

"Yep," Dean said and turned the key in the ignition while he looked at the spoils of Sam's venture. "Hey, I said extra large!"

* * *

The angels weren't the only ones who'd gotten wind of the Colt. This, Sam and Dean found out the hard way, when they found the former owner of the weapon in a pool of his own blood in his study.

"Shit!" Sam said and pulled out the demon knife. There were three black-eyed demons in this room alone; God knew how many more in the rest of the house. Dean pulled out his stake of Palo Santo wood and nailed one of them to the wall and started to chant the exorcism.

He didn't get more than three stanzas in before a fourth demon jumped out at him. Dean put his arm up which made the knife glance off instead of hitting home, but the force of the attack toppled the both of them. Dean hit his head hard enough to see stars, and the demon would have finished what it started if Sam hadn't driven his own knife into its back. By now, the crackle and red light of a demon dying was familiar, and Dean closed his eyes against it

"Sam," Dean said, but he was well on his way to losing consciousness, and the best he could do was stay out of the way. He heard the ungodly roar and rush of a demon being exorcised, and the thumps of several bodies hitting the floor, in quick succession.

When he finally managed to open his eyes and sit up, still a little woozy, he found Sam standing in the middle of the room, breathing heavily and surrounded by bodies. Dean blinked. He knew Sam was a solid fighter; he hadn't realized he'd been out long enough for him to take down all of them.

"They're dead," Sam said and limped over to Dean to help him to his feet. "I got the Colt from their leader. Let's get out of here."

* * *

**Interlude**

* * *

Dean figured he was allowed a break from the neverending shitshow that was his life, so he did what every self-respecting American did to forget their troubles; he went to the movies.

He'd had to drive quite far, to find a movie theater of a respectable size, but that was alright because Sam had gone off on his own somewhere, and Bobby was holding down the fort.

When it came to it, it wasn't difficult to pick the movie he wanted to see from the markees.  _ Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.  _ Dean had see _ n Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan  _ in theaters back in the day, thinking fondly of catching the odd episode of it on TV in his childhood and being transported to a better future than he could ever have imagined. Of course, that movie had ended with his favorite character dying, which  _ sucked,  _ and Dean wouldn't have gone to see the sequel if it hadn't been for the title "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock". And they did find Spock, who was brought back to life, and now they all had to find their way back home.

Maybe, Dean thought as the title card flashed to swelling orchestral music in the darkened movie theater, punctuated by the rustling of clothes and crunching of popcorn,  _ just maybe  _ all of it hit a little too close to home for him.

But when Dean walked out, he felt both giddy with laughter and wistful with nostalgia. It had been _ Star Trek  _ at its best; fun and silly but still gripping, somehow. It was comforting that  _ someone  _ was imagining a better future for mankind, even if the odds weren't great.

"I don't understand why they had to bring the whales with them."

The people around him had masked the sound of wings, but Dean recognized the voice immediately. He swung around and grabbed Castiel by the lapel of his stupid trenchcoat and dragged him out of the theater.

Walking out onto the street was bracing — even though it was summer, the nights were cool this far north, and Dean found himself raising his shoulders toward his ears protectively. He glanced at Castiel and hissed, "It's science fiction, it doesn't have to make sense!"

"Would it not have been possible for them to alter history instead, so that the whale species did not go extinct in the first place?" Castiel said seriously. 

Dean almost tripped over himself. He blinked and looked at Cas more carefully. "You– I mean, uh, they only had one shot. How would they have made sure to change history so that whales made it, but not changed it for something worse, you know?"

Castiel nodded thoughtfully. "That is the peril of changing the past," he said, and Dean had a horrible feeling that he wasn't talking only hypothetically.

"Okay," Dean said and looked around. They had walked way past his parked car, and the street wasn't deserted but they still kind of stood out, walking shoulder by shoulder like this. "Do all angels pop down to chat  _ Star Trek  _ with unsuspecting humans?"

Castiel looked at him and then immediately looked away, and then upward. "No," he said. "Angels have not walked the Earth for millenia."

"Wow, you make me feel special," Dean said sarcastically.

"You are," Castiel agreed without hesitation, which made Dean almost trip over himself  _ again. _ It was getting old. "You are the Righteous Man."

"What does  _ that  _ mean?" Dean said. Hearing a term like that applied to him made his teeth itch.

"It means that you have the power to stop the Apocalypse," Castiel said.

They'd turned around back to the Impala, and Dean unlocked the door somewhat forcefully. 

"I still don't understand why you need me for this," he said, a little desperately.

"Yours is not the place to question the mission," Castiel said. It sounded like a rehearsed line, such a far cry from his genuine, dorky question about the plot of _ Star Trek IV  _ that Dean blinked.

"No? Then whose is it? Yours?"

Castiel hesitated. It was the first time Dean had seen him hesitate.

"I'm an angel," he said, as if that was an answer.

Dean scoffed. "Some angel you are. I nearly died getting the Colt, and then you would've had to take a trip Downstairs to get me all over again."

"I am not your  _ guardian," _ Castiel said, bristling like a bird burring up its feathers. "Angels are warriors, soldiers of God!"

"Well, then be a good little soldier and run back to base and tell them that we did get the Colt," Dean said. He felt wrong-footed, by Castiel's change in demeanor, and he didn't quite know why. "I'm sure you'll get a promotion."

"I'm not–" Castiel looked back at him, right into his eyes. "I don't just follow orders mindlessly, or for reward," he finished, but he didn't sound as certain as he had when he told Dean he was a warrior.

"Okay," Dean said slowly. "So what are you doing here? Did you come down just for fun?"

Castiel looked down on his hands. "Humanity is fascinating," he said softly. "I was curious."

"Oh," Dean said. He didn't know what else to say. Castiel looked up at him, and Dean wasn't sure, but he thought that some color had risen to his cheeks. Then he disappeared into thin air like he'd never been there.

Dean cursed and looked around, but nobody seemed to have noticed anything, so he got into the car to drive back.

As he drove, he thought that in many ways, Castiel reminded him of Spock, the black-haired alien who revered intellect and spoke like a robot. The notion, for some reason, made his ears burn.

* * *

**II.**

* * *

So they had the Colt; privately, Dean admired the old-fashioned model, the heft of the metal and the long barrel. It contained only six bullets, which meant they had to pick their targets carefully. All they had to do now was figure out how to find Lilith. They set up camp in Bobby's library, and they were on the phone with Ash at least once a day.

"All quiet on the western front," Dean said with a sigh and set the phone back on the receiver. Bobby had given up a while ago already and was out working his actual day job as a scrapyard owner.

Sam looked up at him, exaggerated shock written over his face.

"Was that a reference to the World War I novel?"

"What?" Dean said and crossed his arms defensively. "I read!"

Sam just watched him for a beat, before he smiled, vacantly, and then he shut the book he was reading with a pointed thump. "Guess so," he said and got to his feet. "I need to get out of here and go for a drive."

"What– again? Jeez, I'm beginning to think you don't even like me," Dean joked and unwrapped a Starburst candy. He was working through a bag of them, determined to make sure he still liked all the same things as he did before. So far he'd checked Lucky Strikes, greasy diner burgers, and boxed Mac and Cheese off the list, and Starbursts were on their way to join them. He wasn't sure about the Skittles, but they were pretty new, so maybe he shouldn't hold them to the same standards as he did the candy from his childhood.

Sam paused and looked at him, with that painfully earnest expression he had when he was going to say something he really meant.

"No, Dean, I'm so happy to have you back," he said, and Dean ducked his head into the bag of Starbursts to get away from his honesty. "It's just that, well, I guess I got used to being on my own a little bit. I just need to clear my head, get some fresh air–"

"No, yeah, I get it," Dean said and flapped his hand dismissively. "Get out of here, Mr Mindfulness."

But after Sam had gone, Dean kept chewing Starbursts and listlessly flipping pages in Bobby's demonology books and Bible index while something nagged at him. He and Sam had been co-dependent, that was true — the death of a father who raised you to be monster hunters would do a number on you, Dean supposed — and it wasn't a bad thing to spend some time apart. But there had been something up with Sam since, well, since Dean got back. At first Dean thought it was just him getting used to being back, but now, several months in, he had to face facts.

Sam was being shifty.

By now the sound of fluttering wings and the strange pop of a form appearing from nothing was familiar, and still Dean jumped.

"Goddammit, Cas," Dean said and smacked his fist on the book in front of him. "Would it kill you to, I don't know, call first or something?"

"Do not blaspheme," said a voice which was not Castiel's, and Dean looked up to see another man in a suit; also an angel judging by the way the hair at the back of Dean's neck stood up.

"Dean, this is Uriel, my garrison counterpart," Castiel said. He looked to his companion, whose vessel was also a man. The resemblance to Castiel ended there though; where Castiel's vessel was dwarfed by his trenchcoat, this man was bursting out of his plain, black suit, and he was bald with dark brown skin where Castiel had a shock of black hair in constant disarray and skin that was even lighter than Dean's freckled complexion.

"Oh, are we going to a dance?" Dean said, feeling prickly about the surprise "I don't have a partner myself, but–"

"Quiet," the other angel said. His voice was even deeper than Castiel's; Castiel's voice was deep like a black pond in the forest. This guy's voice was deep like the Marianas trench. "We are in need of your services."

Dean didn't know what to brace for when Castiel reached out a hand and touched his forehead again; he blinked and found himself somewhere else. A warehouse, if he had to guess, with bright light slanting in between boarded up windows. His stomach turned at the strange vertigo the experience produced.

"Lovely," Dean said and swallowed laboriously. "Who can I talk to about renting this for the summer?"

"Does he always talk such nonsense?" Uriel said. He looked faintly amused, the way Dean imagined a house cat was amused by a mouse struggling to get away from under their paw.

"I hoped you and Dean would get along," Castiel said with a glance Dean's way. "You both have a particular sense of humor."

Uriel laughed, and Dean had to tilt his head like Castiel used to do. Castiel wanted to introduce him to his friends? He hadn't even known angels had friends.

"I have no interest in sharing anything with a primate like him. We don't have time for pleasantries, " Uriel said then, and Dean rolled his eyes. So much for a sense of humor.

"Uriel, I urge you to reconsider," Castiel said, voice lowered. "Dean doesn't deserve this."

"Real nice of you to spirit me away and then talk about me like I'm not even here," Dean said. "Where, by the way, I never asked to be."

"We need you to put the skills you acquired in Hell to use," Uriel said, loudly.

Dean's stomach turned to ice. "What?" he managed.

"We have captured a demon who knows Lilith's whereabouts," Uriel continued and set both hands behind his back. Businesslike. "He refuses to tell us. We need you to convince him."

"No," Dean said. The word was a reflex, inherent. He wouldn't. Not again.

Uriel moved without moving. Suddenly he was an inch from Dean's face, a towering presence in more ways than the physical.

"We dragged you out of Hell," he said in a deep rumble. "And we can put you back."

With a gesture of his hand, a sliding door opened into another room. The message was clear; go in and do as you're told.

Uriel turned and walked into the room, leaving Dean and Castiel in what Dean supposed was the antechamber to the room of torture they set up. He looked at Castiel, or rather his profile, as he stood half turned away from him.

"Wasn't this–" Dean said. His voice hitched and he tried again. "This was how I broke that first seal, wasn't it?"

At that, Castiel finally turned to him. His vessel's eyes were shaped for conveying sadness, but the sorrow was etched into every line of his features, the desperate sweep of his movement.

"If it were within my power to spare you from this, Dean, I would!" Castiel said, as earnestly as only Castiel could. "But, like Uriel, I am under orders. This is our best chance to find Lilith."

"And we need to find Lilith to stop the Apocalypse, I get it." Dean said and rubbed at his mouth. His stubble grated against his palm. At least this would give his experience a measure of worth. Some  _ point  _ to what he endured. To what he did. "Alright."

He walked in. When he saw the demon bound in the devil's trap, hung up much like a piece of meat to bleed dry, he stopped cold. He would have taken a step back if it wasn't for Castiel standing right behind him.

"Hi there, Dean," Alastair said, grinning from ear to ear. How Dean could tell it was him, he didn't know — whatever human he was possessing didn't particularly resemble his demonic form. No human would. But he knew. "Long time no see. How you been?"

"Cas," Dean said, eyes fixed on Alastair's grinning mouth. Castiel didn't say anything, but he put a hand on Dean's shoulder, a warm, comforting weight. Dean closed his eyes for a second and then strode forward purposefully, so that Castiel's hands slipped off his shoulder.

Uriel, the sick fuck, smiled beatifically when Dean approached the array of instruments that had been provided for him. When Dean picked up a knife, he heard the flap of wings and knew. _ Castiel has left the building.  _ Dean couldn't blame him. He wouldn't want to see what came next either.

* * *

"I thought I taught you better than this," Alastair said, with what would have sounded like a conversational tone if he wasn't choking on his own blood. "It barely tickles!"

"You're a good liar," Dean said and leaned back to inspect his handiwork. The trick, as he well had learned, was to inflict as much pain with as little actual hurt as possible. He set his tool down and turned away to deliberately pull his flannel shirt off. Time to put his back into it. "Tell me where Lilith is."

Alastair showed all of his bloody teeth. "As if these angels need me to tell you," he said. "They just like seeing you do their dirty work for them."

Uriel had left shortly after Castiel, seemingly bored with the procedure. Dean didn't know if it was worse with or without him breathing down his neck.

"The angels," Dean said, taking care to enunciate every word as he picked up a hook-shaped tool and inspected it carefully, "were kind enough to allow me the opportunity to repay a favor."

An awful, hacking sound — Alastair laughing.

"Dean, Dean, Dean," he said, blood dribbling down his chin with the name. "You think it was all worth it, don't you? Oh, sure, you spent a few months that felt like years in the Pit, but at least Sammy was safe, right?"

At the mention of Sam, Dean's head snapped up. He couldn't help it; it was another instinct. And Alastair could smell blood in the water. That infuriating smile seemed fixed on his face when he went on, "When you made that deal, did you think we gave Sam back unchanged?"

Dean's hindbrain took over. He was inside the devil's trap with his hand on Alastair's throat, close enough to smell his rotten breath without even blinking. He could feel the demon swallow under his palm. Crushing the trachea would be so easy, the work of just a squeeze.

"The past doesn't matter," Dean said softly and tracked the minute shift of Alastair's eyes as they flicked over him. "What matters is right now, and right now you're at my mercy. And what do you know, I don't have a lot of that around. So tell me where Lilith is."

"I won't," Alastair said and wheezed. "Did you know, I think someone was sloppy with this devil's trap."

Dean startled out of his cold rage and took a step back. Big mistake, because all Alastair had to do was stretch, now that the trap was broken, and Dean was smacked to the concrete wall hard enough that his head rang with the impact.

The weird thing was that Dean didn't even feel scared. It felt more like,  _ of course this was going to happen. Of course he wouldn't have escaped Alastair. _

The blunt force trauma of Alastair using him as a punching bag wasn't even top ten worst things ever done to him, in the grand scheme of things. Dean felt his lip split after a vicious blow, and his nose was bleeding freely. He couldn't even keep track of the cuts and bruises over the rest of his body.

Alastair getting in close, nose to nose, with his hand around Dean's throat in turn, now that might merit a placement. Dean gripped his forearm with both hands, to get some leverage but his grip was weak, his head swimming, and his mouth tasted of his own blood as Alastair pushed him up against the wall with his superhuman strength.

"If I kill you now," Alastair mused as he squeezed Dean's throat, "you'll end up back in Hell, and us two– we can pick up right where we left off. I think that's exactly what I'm going to do."

Strangely, Dean's thoughts went to Castiel.  _ Guess he pulled me out for nothing after all. _

But then Alastair's grin transformed into a grimace, and Dean saw red light flash from between his teeth. He gasped for air when death loosened Alastair's grip, and the demon slumped down to reveal none other than Castiel, with his brow knit in fury and hair in disarray.

"Dean," he said and started forward to catch Dean by the arms before he slumped down, too. Dean saw a flash of silvery metal at the sleeve of his coat, and wondered what it was he'd used to kill Alastair.

He blinked up into Castiel's eyes, the deep blue of them, and opened his mouth without knowing what to say. "How do we find Lilith now?"

Castiel blinked and then shook his head. "You're hurt," he said, voice fraught with emotion that Dean had trouble parsing. Was he angry?

There was the flutter of wings, and Uriel's voice boomed, "Why did you return, brother?"

_ Brother? _ From what Dean had been given to understand, the angels were an army. But, he supposed, they did share the same dad. And like siblings, they had to squabble sometimes. Castiel gave Dean's arms a reassuring press before he let go and turned to Uriel. Dean hawked in another breath and did his best to remain standing.

"I heard a prayer," Castiel said, solemnly. "How did the demon escape his trap, Uriel?"

Uriel shook his head. "Castiel, it is time to give up this foolish notion of thwarting the Apocalypse. We must fight the war to  _ win  _ it."

Dean could only see the back of Castiel, but he thought there was something prideful in the way he straightened up. "Fighting the war will cause untold suffering," he said, unflinchingly. "I cannot think it is God's will."

Uriel scoffed, a sound like the cracking of stone. "God's will? Surely, Castiel, you know already that God has abandoned us."

Castiel didn't move. The stillness was unnatural, deliberate, and Dean blinked. That was certainly news to  _ him, _ who had it on Castiel's authority that He had their back. Did Castiel know, or was Uriel lying?

And Uriel went on in a softer tone. "Brother, please, it's for the best. You know we will win the war."

Still Castiel said nothing, so Uriel continued, more forcefully. "If we let Lucifer Morningstar out, the archangels will take God's place and we will finally know peace again."

This made Castiel start out of the stillness. He widened his stance, quite literally taking a stand. "Let him out? No. Never," he said, with the same kind of knee-jerk conviction Dean recognized in himself when he had something to defend. "Uriel, stop this madness."

"Madness? You're the one who's mad, thinking our Almighty Father is still running the show," Uriel said with a joyless chuckle. "Step aside, Castiel. Dean Winchester cannot live. He's the only one who can stop Lilith."

And Dean saw Uriel take a step toward him. But Castiel took a step to the side, to intercept him, and Dean saw that same flash of silvery metal by his sleeve. A sharp, awl-like blade no more than a foot and half in length was in his hand, and when Dean had blinked once, another weapon of the same kind was in Uriel's hand.

What followed was hand-to-hand combat unlike anything Dean had ever witnessed. The two angels moved faster than his eyes could follow, in elegant, sweeping slashes and thrusts, parried or evaded by tightly controlled movements that made the earth tremble.

It was such an incredible show of prowess that it took Dean a moment to process the stakes. If Castiel was killed, Dean would soon follow. And Castiel, though competent and light on his feet, was outmatched by Uriel's sheer power. After a feint to draw Castiel in, Uriel knocked his blade aside with his own, and then brought his arm up to suckerpunch the side of Castiel's face.

Castiel's blade clattered to the side, and Dean's heart skittered along with it. Uriel lifted Castiel up by the lapel, high enough that the toes of his scuffed Derby shoes barely even touched the floor.

"I don't want to do this, brother," Uriel said. "Come with me. Please."

Dean swallowed a mouthful of blood and picked up Castiel's blade. It was a lot heavier than it looked. "Hey, Cas," he barked. "Catch!"

All those lazy afternoons in his teens when he waited on either his brother to get off school or his father to finish a job, he spent throwing knives. It paid off; the blade whirled through the air, and Castiel caught it in his left hand. And without hesitation, he drove it in and up under Uriel's ribs.

Where demons flashed red in death, angels evaporated in a white light so bright that Dean had to shield his eyes with his arm. When Dean opened his eyes and blinked away the black sunspots, Castiel was standing over Uriel's collapsed vessel. He didn't look triumphant; he looked like he was barely able to stand up.

"Hey," Dean said, shocked at how hoarse his voice was. The blood from his nose and lip had started to crust on his chin, and he was limping bad enough that he thought maybe he had sprained something. Castiel's head snapped up, and he was by Dean's side quick as anything. Dean blinked. The blade had disappeared up his sleeve again.

"Let me heal you," Castiel said and held up two fingers again. Dean looked at his hand and then at his face, before he leaned in.

Soothing warmth flowed from the touch and when Dean opened his eyes again, he could lean his full weight on his leg again. His lip didn't throb anymore.

"That's one hell of a trick," he said. Castiel turned away, to look at Uriel. Dean noticed that giant soot marks had spread out from his body, along the floor and up against the walls, in the shape of wings.

"I'm so sorry Dean," Castiel said. "I didn't know Uriel harboured an intent to let you die. I don't even know if Alastair knew where Lilith is. I put you through this for nothing."

And that twisted something in Dean's gut alright. But he swallowed down the bile that threatened to rise and said, "Well, that's in the past. Look, Cas, I don't know if you need to report back to home base or what, but– Look, I bet Sam is going absolutely nuts not knowing where I am right now."

Castiel returned his gaze to Dean. The sorrow in his eyes seemed to be tempered with something like acceptance.

"Of course, Dean," he said and when he reached out his hand again, he didn't wait for Dean to lean in.

* * *

**III.**

* * *

Blinking his eyes open back in Bobby's library was just as nausea-inducing as the trip out. Dean made a sound and braced himself against the table.

"Dean!" Sam exclaimed and dashed immediately to his side. "What happened? Oh my god, are you okay? Bobby's in the kitchen, calling for backup."

"I'm fine," Dean said, uncomfortably aware that even though his wounds were healed, the crusted blood hadn't been wiped away. "Tell Bobby to cancel the backup, I was just on an angel-sanctioned tropical getaway."

He shrugged off Sam's hand and went to the denim jacket he'd left draped over the back of his chair — it still wasn't quite worn in, not like his old one that had been frayed from use in just the right places — and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket. It took him several tries with the lighter before he managed to light his cigarette, and by then Bobby had entered the room.

"What the hell happened to you?" Bobby asked, and Dean drew in a lungful of smoke.

"I think the angels aren't all fighting the same fight," he said, letting the smoke pour out of his mouth and nose on the exhale. "They asked me to make a demon talk, but the demon got loose and I got the shit kicked out of me before Cas got him."

Sam made a sympathetic grimace, and Dean had to pull in another shaky breath of smoke. "And the other angel, he– I think he let the demon loose. To make the Apocalypse happen. And Cas killed him too."

"Holy shit," Sam said after a moment. Bobby blew out a noisy breath and pulled off his ball cap to run his hand over his head. Dean shrugged and kept smoking his cigarette.

* * *

After tossing and turning for several hours, Dean deemed it a lost cause, and he got up just before dawn started to kiss the horizon. He shrugged on his too-new denim jacket and went outside to inspect the cars Bobby had lined up to be mined for parts.

He was elbow-deep in the engine of a totaled Dodge, to get at a component he thought he could use for the beat-up but structurally sound Ford Bronco Bobby kept meaning to fix up some day, when the tell-tale flap of wings made him jerk up and bang his head on the hood of the car.

Dean emerged, cursing quietly, to find the familiar suit and trenchcoat no more than two feet away. Castiel looked at Dean, and Dean thought he could detect the shadow of a smile when he said, "Do you need me to heal you again?"

"You shut the hell up," Dean said and grinned as he closed the hood of the car to lean against it. It surprised him that a smile should come easy to him right now. "You okay?"

"I am fine," he said and to Dean's surprise, Castiel joined him on the hood of the car. He leaned against it gingerly, obviously mimicking Dean's stance, before he tilted his head up toward the vanishing stars. "How are you, Dean?"

"I'm fine too."

Castiel tilted his head to look at him. "That's a lie," he said.

Dean blew out a breath and rubbed the palms of his hands on his jeans. They were torn by the knee and he pulled at a thread viciously. "Well, what do you want me to say? Being in Hell fucked me up and seeing Alastair again fucked me up some more. Added some to my fucked up baggage pile. I'm glad he's dead. Where do demons even go when they die?"

"I don't know," Castiel said contemplatively. "I don't know where angels go, either."

Dean shook his head. "Well, good to know not even angels know everything."

"Is it good?" Castiel said, sounding genuinely curious. "I find it upsetting."

Castiel's honesty surprised Dean in turn. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and glanced at him.

"You know, in Hell, I did it just to have something to do. The torture." Dean had to swallow to keep going. "The worst part wasn't the pain. You get used to that. The worst part is having absolutely nothing to work towards. The goddamn monotony– it, it broke me. It really did." He broke off to look at Castiel, and found him looking back. "What I'm saying is, maybe I get how some angels could've. You know. Snapped."

"Uriel didn't 'snap', Dean," Castiel said, carefully enough that Dean could hear the quotation marks. He turned his face back toward the sky. "He became twisted over the course of millennia. I don't know how many others may share his ideas."

"What– I don't know how shit works in Heaven, but what did your garrison say about him? When you told them what happened"

Castiel's expression sobered, turning heavy. "They were upset, and rightly so. An angel dead by his brother's hand–"

"I'm sorry," Dean said and clenched his fists in his pockets. His old jacket had had a little hole worn in the right side pocket. Could never keep your change in there. "That can't have been easy."

"Thank you," Castiel said seriously. "You aided me in my fight against Uriel, and you now offer condolences. That's more than I can say for many of my siblings."

"I haven't had a great sample size," Dean said and kicked a pebble that was resting against the toe of his boot. "But your siblings seem like they're kind of assholes."

Castiel tilted his head back down, and Dean saw his eyes crease in a private little smile. "We're angels," he said. "Human courtesies are seldom necessary."

With that, they leaned against the hood of the car, a man and an angel, in silence and watched the sky brighten by degrees.

"So do you, I don't know, drink coffee?" Dean said, when the first rays of the sun poked through the slats of the fence surrounding Bobby's yard. "I could put on a pot, if you like."

"Thank you, but no," Castiel said and roused himself from the hood of the car. He turned and looked Dean in the eyes, deep enough that Dean felt uncomfortable. He was going to have to teach Cas some human courtesies if he was going to keep coming around like this.

"What will you do now?" Dean asked, and his voice came out duskier than he intended.

"I'm going to find God," Castiel said, like it was self-evident. "For too long I have trusted the word of his emissaries, but no longer."

And with that, Castiel disappeared with a sweep of his invisible wings, and Dean was left staring out at nothing.

"Well," Dean said to himself as he turned to trudge back in to put on that pot of coffee for himself. "Good fucking luck to you, Cas."


	7. For Your Life

* * *

**I.**

* * *

Small town America was more or less the same wherever you went, with the same selection of stores down the main street and the same type of people bustling about and levelling a pair of strangers rolling up in a big, black car with the same type of suspicion. At least the local law enforcement detail was more cooperative than usual, when Sam and Dean flashed their fake FBI badges, first at the police station and then at the coroner's office.

Both places had garish Halloween decorations in place, and Dean gleefully pointed out the rubber skeleton hanging behind the reception desk. Sam only scoffed derisively. He'd never liked Halloween, Dean knew.

"Agents Scott and Young," Sam said primly and tucked his badge back into his inner breast pocket. "We're here about the couple-murder-suicide situation."

The receptionist, who had her messy brown hair done up in a bun and enough blue eyeshadow to make her look practically insomniac, blew a large bubble of pink bubblegum between her fuchsia colored lips. Dean flinched when it popped. He played it off by shifting his shoulders under his jacket. These monkey suits always felt too tight.

"Down the hall and to the right," the receptionist said and gave Sam a once-over so obvious that Dean had to raise his eyebrows. "Can't miss it." No indeed.

"Thank you," Sam said and took off without so much as a second glance at her. Dean caught her eye and shrugged apologetically. What could he say, Sam was a hard catch.

The coroner obligingly pulled out the two bodies for them to inspect. "Do you need me to walk you through–" he said, voice lifting up hopefully.

"No, thanks, we got it from here," Dean said brusquely, already pulling on the medical rubber gloves. The coroner sighed in relief and patted the pockets of his white coat.

"Thank God, I need my smoke break," he chuckled and started for the door. "Almost got fired for doing it in here once."

Sam smiled at him, but Dean could tell his mind was already on the corpses. The autopsy was already performed, the grotesque Y-shape of the incision stitched back together and the organs scooped out and placed in jars. The door shut quietly behind the coroner.

"Hey look at this," Dean said and picked up the neatly labeled jar containing the dead man's heart. Sam looked up from where he'd been inspecting the dead woman's gunshot wound. "Looks like– some sort of _symbol_ etched into the heart."

Sam picked up the jar containing the woman's heart. "Does it look the same as this?" he said and held out the jar.

"Yeah," Dean said. There was something familiar about the symbol too, something in the visual idiom that plucked at a string in Dean's memory. "I think I've seen something like this before."

"Do you need to roll up your sleeves and check?" Sam said, with a little glimmer of humor in his eyes. Dean made a face at him.

"No, it's none of mine," he said slowly, and then, unwillingly, his memory flashed back to a boarded up warehouse and a devil's trap made out of unfamiliar symbols. "I think it's angelic."

"Angelic?" Sam said and looked at the jar in his hands. "Well, why don't we ask Cas about it?"

"It's not like I have his number," Dean scoffed and set his jar down.

It was Sam's turn to raise his eyebrows. Dean didn't appreciate it. "I thought you said you called him to you with a prayer once."

"It wasn't a _prayer,"_ Dean said and went to cross his arms before he realized he was wearing gloves that had touched dead bodies. "Why don't you try it, if you think that's going to work?"

"I _have_ tried," Sam said, and he sounded a little sad about it. "Doesn't work for me, but it seems to work for you. I mean, what do we have to lose?"

That point, Dean had to concede. He closed his eyes and cleared his throat. "Castiel, if you can hear me, we would appreciate your input. Thanks, amen."

"Oh, come on," Sam said when Dean opened his eyes and quirked a grin at him. "You could at least _pretend–"_

He was interrupted by the sound of a wingbeat and a change of air. Dean turned around to find Castiel right in front of him, but the shock of his slapdash prayer having worked was superseded by the shock of finding Cas obviously beat up and barely able to stand. A trail of blood was running down his face from his hairline, and the collar of his white dress shirt was stained red.

"Whoa, whoa, Cas!" Dean said and immediately reached out to support him. Castiel leaned his weight against Dean gratefully. "Cas, man, what the hell is going on?"

"Demons," Castiel said, his hand clutching the lapel of Dean's suit. "They're gathering en masse, and we don't have enough warriors to face them."

"Guess we shouldn't have put the Sword and Arm of the Lord guys behind bars," Sam said, lightly. Dean leveled him with a look. He usually appreciated it when Sam showed a sense of humor, but maybe he didn't realize what the odds had to be to beat an _angel._ But one look at him revealed a worried little line between his eyebrows; Sam _did_ realize it was bad.

"I'm worried," Castiel said and broke off to give a tearing, wet cough. Dean's grip on him tightened. "I think the demons might have found a way to track me."

As if on cue, there was a crash in the hallway, and Castiel straightened up. Dean let go of him and reached for his holy water or Palo Santo, but with a curse, he realized he'd left all of that stuff in the trunk of the Impala. An FBI agent didn't carry around wooden stakes. 

Castiel's angel blade materialized in his hand, but Dean realized he alone would be no match for the four demons that broke down the door to the morgue. One of them had possessed the coroner himself, still with the cigarette wedged in the corner of his mouth.

"Oh, look," one of the demons sneered. "The brothers Winchester have arrived at the scene! Two flies with one stone, right? Who should we start with?"

Castiel shifted his stance to attack, but Dean saw that it was unsteady. Whatever the demons had done to him previously, it was a real number.

But before Castiel or the demons could attack, Sam said, "Stand back," and reached out his hands.

What happened next was difficult for Dean to process, simply because he didn't know such a thing was possible. Sam closed his hands into fists, and every demon in the room stopped mid-step and near-identical looks of panic flitted across their faces.

Dean flicked his eyes from the demons to his brother. Sam had lowered his head and looked like he was bracing himself, concentrating deeply. Then all four of the demons threw their heads back as their demonic essence was expunged from the mouths of the host bodies in ashy, black clouds. 

The bodies slumped down, and in a daze, Dean went to check on them. They were all dead, even the coroner.

"What," Dean said, still crouched by the last victim, "the fuck?"

He got back to his feet and looked straight at Sam. Sam looked about as unsteady on his feet as Castiel now, but Dean, for the first time in his life, wasn't sure if he wanted to lend him a steadying hand.

"We got to, um, check the rest of the building," Sam said, clearly meaning _we'll talk about this later._ And they did have to check the rest of the building, so Dean let the matter lie for now.

The rest of the building was empty, but for the receptionist, who they found dead at her desk: killed.

"God dammit," Dean muttered, and he closed her eyes, careful not to touch the blood spatter. No matter what, people kept dying around them. When he was young, he thought they'd been saving them. Now, he wondered if all they really did was put other people in danger.

Cas looked as distraught as Dean felt, and Sam seemed to have roused himself somewhat from the exertion of exorcising four demons with, what, willpower alone? No, this was some bad as fuck magic, and the notion made Dean's skin crawl.

The door opened and a woman entered. She had dark hair and dark eyes, and Dean immediately moved to shield her from the gruesome sight of the receptionist, but Castiel shifted position and said, "Demon."

"Cool your jets, boys," the demon said and held her hands out in a placating manner. The human she was possessing had a square, beautiful face and was dressed in jeans and a fashionable, short jacket. "It's me, Ruby. Surprise!" She managed to make jazz hands sarcastically. "Sam, c'mon, let's go!"

"He's not going with you," Dean said with knee-jerk certainty. "Sam, you've got the knife, right?"

"Dean, it's not what you think," Sam said. "Ruby's been helping us all along."

Dean blinked, and just like that, his certainty wavered. "She's– and you _knew?"_ The anger welled up so suddenly, Dean understood the phrase 'blind with rage' for the first time in his life. 

"I can explain," Sam said.

"Explain what, Sammy?" Dean said. His anger had gone from red hot metal to tempered steel in the space of a second. "Why you didn't tell me you were still hanging out with a demon while we've been trying to stop the goddamn fucking Apocalypse from breaking out?"

Sam closed his mouth into a flat line and blew out a breath through his nose. "Dean," he said, this time imploringly. "Ruby– this isn't what you think. She's been helping me stop seals from breaking, and she was helping me kill demons _while you were in Hell."_

"So that's supposed to make this better? Since before I got back from Hell, where I was tortured by _her sort,_ she's been teaching you, what, some demonic witchcraft to exorcise demons?" Dean said, and could feel the steel of his anger heat up again. "Haven't you got it yet, Sam? Making deals with demons isn't worth it."

"You were _dead,"_ Sam snapped. "I didn't have a goddamn thing to lose, and then, when you got back– I could exorcise demons with my mind. Sometimes the people survive, Dean."

"I don't mean to break up your little heart to heart," Ruby drawled. "But something bad is about to happen in this town and you can believe me or not, but I turned up here to stop it. Let's go."

"I ain't going with you," Dean said, doing his best to hammer that anger into the steel of conviction. Ruby wasn't moved; she shrugged and turned to walk out.

Sam took a step after her. Dean closed his hands into fists and said, "If you go, Sam, you better stay gone."

The look Sam leveled him with was sad, but at the same time Dean could see the resolve beneath. "I'm going to do whatever I can to stop what's happening here," Sam said. "I'm sorry."

And with that, he followed Ruby out of the coroner's office building.

The air went out of Dean immediately. He put one hand to the wall for support and the other to his eyes.

"Jesus Christ, what a fucking mess," he muttered. He heard the rustle of clothing as Castiel took a step closer to him. Dean lowered his hand from his eyes.

"I'm not sure how to proceed," Castiel said. "I suspect if I use my angelic powers, the demons will find me again."

"Then don't," Dean said. "Go back to the morgue, and take a look at the hearts in the jars on the table, see if the marks on them mean anything to you. I'll go get some Palo Santo and holy water from the car, and we can meet back here to figure out how to explain all this shit to the locals."

* * *

**II.**

* * *

"Run that by me again," Dean said, putting his arm on the headrest behind Castiel to look over his shoulder as he backed into the parking space by the police station. "Cherubs, like chubby little babies with wings shooting arrows-cherubs?"

"That is how they are usually depicted," Castiel said, and shifted forward to turn his head and follow Dean's gaze. "But they are angels, not babies, and tasked with bringing important bloodlines together. The marks on their hearts simply denote that the couple that killed themselves were destined to fall in love."

"Alright, I've heard a lot of bullshit in my time," Dean said and killed the engine before he pulled up the parking brake. "But that takes the fucking cake."

He was still scoffing at the idea of predestined love when he got out of the car, immediately followed by Castiel. "Okay," he said and motioned for Castiel to come closer, around the front of the Impala. "You're my FBI partner, you were sent in as backup because the coroner went crazy and killed everyone in the building. _Capisce?"_

"I do _not_ understand," Castiel said and eyed Dean with an affronted expression when Dean reached out to fix his blue tie. "What are you doing?"

"An FBI agent can't walk around with a crooked tie," Dean said and tightened the knot, pulling it up to lie snug against the V of the white collar. "What, exactly, don't you understand?"

"Why can't we tell these people the truth?"

Dean made the mistake of looking up, right into Castiel's deep, blue eyes.

It had happened a couple of times before. Castiel being a step too close for comfort, Dean looking over to find Castiel looking back, intently. Or, not intently as such, but _interestedly,_ like he truly wanted to see Dean. Dean, who wasn't used to being seen, usually told him to quit it. But now Dean was the one who had stepped in close, so he smoothed down Castiel's tie and straightened his lapels too before he cleared his throat.

"These yuppies won't believe us," he said. "It's better for them, and for us, if we lie. It'll keep their lives easy."

* * *

"I can't believe Len would do a thing like that," the chief of police said, a rotund man by the name of Stan Booker from behind his desk and slumped back in his chair. "I just can't believe he's dead."

"His death is a matter of fact, not belief," Castiel said, sitting ramrod straight on the chair beside Dean. Dean cleared his throat meaningfully and Castiel glanced at him with an expression that looked close to panic before he added, in an overly sincere tone, "He was not himself."

Stan Booker looked at him and blinked. 

"What my partner means to say is, the stress of the job," Dean said, as sympathetically as he could. "Working with dead bodies– it's not good for just anybody. But, look, that's what we think happened. But on the off-chance that it had something to do with the bodies he was examining — Mr. and Mrs. Deakin — is there _anything_ you could tell me about their life or death? Something that maybe you didn't put in the report?"

Here Stan Booker squinted at Dean. His moustache wobbled a little. "I do my job thoroughly, Agent."

"And I don't mean to suggest otherwise," Dean said easily. "I'm just saying that no detail is too small, not in a case like this."

"Well," Stan Booker said and pulled a hand over his balding head. "I didn't think it had anything to do with it. This one guy killed himself – classic suicide, razor in the bathtub. But he and the Deakins, and now Gina — the girl in the reception — they all went to the same church."

* * *

"I don't believe in love," Dean said as they drove over to the church in question. "But I believe even less in angels making love happen."

"Believe it or not," Castiel said, staring out of the passenger side window like it was prime time TV. "Your parents found each other through angelic intervention."

"Shut the front door!" Dean said. This had Castiel turn his head toward him and blinked owlishly.

"What door?"

"What– no, Cas, it's a saying," Dean said, and found himself laughing. How was this his life? "Wait, so you're saying angels made mom and dad fall in love? Why?"

"Like I said," Castiel said seriously. "To preserve a particular bloodline, for a particular purpose."

"That sounds pretty racist. 'Preserving bloodlines', I'm pretty sure that was a Third Reich talking point," Dean said and pulled the car to a stop in front of the church, which Stan Booker had described for them.

"The purpose is never to _prevent_ someone being born," Castiel said, but he sounded thoughtful. "It was important to Heaven that you and Sam came into being."

"A little too much destiny for me. No thanks."

"It's not something you can opt out of," Castiel said, with an edge of irritation to his dark voice. "You are the Righteous Man, Dean."

"Yeah, right," Dean said and felt his ears heat up. "So, hey do you have any idea what might be going on here?"

"All these deaths seem like sacrifices," Castiel said and shifted to look out from the windshield, to watch the church. It was built of gray stone, older than most other buildings in the town. "Sacrifices made to summon a being of great power."

"Oh great. Love beings of great power," Dean said and turned the key to shut the engine off. 

"We're approaching the festival you call Halloween, aren't we? Castiel said. 

"Uh, yeah. Halloween's tomorrow night.". 

Castiel shook his head. "Halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, the veil between worlds is thin. It's tonight."

You'd think he'd be used to finding out shit like this, but Castiel's matter-of-fact statement sent something crawling down Dean's spine.

The autumn wind was cold enough that Dean shivered when he stepped out of the car and it found its way underneath the collar of his shirt. Castiel, again, followed, and the perpetual worried frown he wore was becoming familiar and even a bit reassuring.

But they had no more than taken a step closer to the church gates when the sound of wings heralded the arrival of another angel. He arrived dressed in a suit, which seemed to be the angelic uniform.

This one looked old, with silver-gray hair and a pinched sort of face. "Castiel," he said, in a pinched sort of voice. 

"Zachariah," Castiel said and Dean noticed that Castiel's posture changed minutely, into something more defensive.

"We're about to smite this town," Zachariah said and brushed a speck of invisible dirt off his suit sleeve. "I suggest you both take this chance to leave."

"You guys still smite entire _towns?"_ Dean said incredulously.

"Everyone in this town cannot be culpable," Castiel said, which Dean supposed answered his question. Zachariah leveled him with a look that was almost bored. 

"Of course not, but it's the only way to keep that seal from breaking, duh," he said. "Like you told us once. To stop the untold suffering of the masses."

"Individual human lives matter," Castiel protested. Dean looked at him in surprise. He'd always pegged Cas for the big picture kind of guy.

"Sure," Zachariah said with a shrug. "But it's God's orders, you know."

"You've heard from Him?" Castiel said, and there was a cadence of hopefulness in his voice that made something in Dean's chest constrict.

Zachariah shrugged again. "Go ask Raphael if you don't believe me."

Castiel looked at Dean then and Dean met his eyes. Dean frowned and opened his mouth to voice his doubt, but before he could say anything, Castiel was gone with that metaphysical flap of wings.

"Goddammit," Dean said, around something that felt a hell of a lot like disappointment.

Zachariah scoffed out a laugh. "Righteous man, my ass," he said. "Alright, well, I suggest you get out of Dodge while the going is good."

And then he was gone too, leaving Dean alone in front of the church.

"Fuck that," Dean said and went in.

* * *

**III.**

* * *

It wasn't even a surprise, really, to find Sam and Ruby inside. Of course Sam and Ruby were there, right up there by the altar and illuminated by the gloomy light falling in through the stained glass window. How she could walk on consecrated ground, Dean didn't know and didn't particularly care to find out. Without even really thinking about it, he reached in under his suit jacket and drew the Colt out of the leather gun holster as he advanced down the aisle.

"Oh, like you're gonna waste your precious bullets on me," Ruby said, but she eyed the weapon nervously anyway. Dean didn't waver. He kept the gun trained on her, calm as anything.

"Sam," he said, just as calmly. "What do you think is going to happen here?"

Sam blew out a breath through his nose, which Dean recognized as frustration. "Dean," he said, with his most reasonable-sounding voice. "Lilith is going to show up, and we need Ruby's help to kill her."

"Don't see why, when I've got the Colt," Dean said. He still had the safety on, but his thumb hovered on it. Sam moved to stand in front of Ruby, and Dean took his thumb off. "Move away, Sammy."

"No," Sam said. "I won't let you waste our best shot at killing Lilith and putting an end to this."

"Last time Lilith showed up _in_ Ruby," Dean said with an angry flick of his head. "What's to say it won't happen again?"

"I've learned from past mistakes, unlike some," Ruby sneered, from her safety behind Sam's broad back. "Look, I'm not the one summoning her this time. She's coming here to break a seal, and we're ready for her."

"And how do you know that?" Dean demanded. But he'd made the mistake of letting Sam get too close. While his attention was on Ruby, Sam made a grab for the Colt and managed to wrest it from Dean's grip — mostly because Dean didn't want to blow his fool brother's head off by mistake. "Jesus fuck, Sam!"

"We all want the same thing, Dean!" Sam said. Instead of pointing the gun at Dean, he held it out of his reach, like Dean used to hold the toy soldiers out of his reach when they were kids.

"Yeah, you said that last time, too," Dean said venomously.

"Guys!" Ruby barked sharply. "She's coming."

Ruby was right. Much like an angel, Lilith appeared by the doors. She hadn't come through them; she was just standing there in what had formerly been Ruby's body, now dressed, somewhat ironically, in a white dress.

"Hello, boys," she said with an amicable nod. "Ruby. Didn't think I'd see you again."

"Now, Sam, use your powers!" Ruby said.

"Sam, don't," Dean said, and to Sam's credit, he didn't.

Instead he lifted the Colt and shot Lilith in the head.

It was a good shot. It went clean through, and Lilith died as all demons did, with a crackle and flash of red. The body fell to the floor with a thud that was loud in the echoing silence after the thunder of the gunshot

"You did it," Ruby said, sounding as shocked as Dean felt. Nothing was ever that easy.

Sam gave a disbelieving huff of air and lowered the Colt. "I can't believe it's over."

And, as if to disavow him of that notion, the earth shook. Dean had to brace himself against a pew as he looked to the body of Lilith. Red lines were snaking out from under her; blood, forming some sort of sigil that made the hair on the back of Dean's neck stand up.

"What's going on?" Sam said, standing like a sailor on a heaving deck.

Ruby shook her head. "I think that was a seal."

"What– killing Lilith?" Sam said, the hurt and fear naked in his voice. Dean didn't look at him though; he watched the stone floor of the church split open along the lines of Lilith's blood, and bright, white light started to seep through the cracks.

It reminded Dean of Uriel's death, and of being pulled out of Hell.

A shrill scream did pull Dean's attention away. He turned to see Ruby fall to her knees, that same bright light shining out of her eyes with a burning intensity — with a crawling sense of horror, Dean realized her eyes _were_ burning.

"Dean," Sam said, and without talking, they both turned away from the light and grabbed each other like drowning men grabbing onto driftwood.

"We really fucked up, huh?" Dean said. He could feel the heat of the light now, skirting the edge of unbearable.

Sam laughed, a sad, trembling sound. "Yeah, I think we might have."

Dean swallowed. Now that he knew Heaven probably existed and Hell definitely did, he spared a thought to where he would end up, dying now. He thought he'd been doing the right things, but, well, good intentions paved the road to precisely the wrong place.

He might have given destiny a hard time not too long ago, but it still felt momentous, that he should hear the sound of wings, and then see Castiel right in front of him, the otherworldly white light reflected in his eyes and giving him a panicked sheen.

Before either of them could say anything, Cas laid a hand on both of them, and Dean once again felt that strange, tipping sensation of traversing space but not time.

He blinked, suddenly surrounded by cold air and blessed, cool darkness. Sam fell to his knees beside him, to vomit quietly. Any other time, Dean would have crouched too, to offer condolences or chuck up in sympathy, but all he could do was stare at Cas, who still had his hand on his arm and looked back at him with an intensity that Dean didn't know what to do with.

"Cas," he said again, and his voice wobbled pitifully. "What just happened?"

"Sam broke the last seal," Castiel said, and here he lowered his gaze, like he was trying to wrest some emotion under control. "Lucifer is risen."

Despite himself, Dean lifted his hand and set it on Castiel's arm in turn. Castiel looked up at him again and they just stood there, holding each other, breaths coming out in visible, white clouds as the wind rustled the trees around them and the world changed irrevocably.

* * *

**Exitlude**

* * *

"Why?" Dean said. He and Castiel were still locked by hands and eyes, and Sam had sat down to lean against the trunk of a tree, exhausted.

"Why what?" Castiel said, his voice as gravel-rough as ever.

"Why did you come back to save us?"

"I couldn't find Raphael."

Dean sucked in an unsteady breath. But before he could say anything more, there was the sound of wings that meant the arrival of another angel, and Sam scrambled to his feet.

Zachariah, flanked by two other angels, stood before them. Dean's grip on Castiel tightened instinctually as he saw Zachariah eye them with a curl to his mouth that signaled distaste.

"Well, I believe the saying is: you really shat the bed," Zachariah said.

"I thought you were going to smite the town," Dean said. "Seems to me your sheets don't smell of roses either."

That hit a nerve. Zachariah's sneer shuttered into something like anger, and the two angels on his sides also shifted. Poised to attack.

"Castiel, come with us," Zachariah said. "You have disobeyed a direct order from your commander."

"I received no direct order," Castiel said. Oddly, Dean felt pride swell in his chest. _Tell 'em, Cas,_ he thought.

"Don't split hairs," Zachariah snarled. He made a cutting motion, and the other two angels advanced to grab Castiel by the arms.

"Hey!" Dean said, refusing to let go of Castiel's trenchcoat. "You can't just–"

But they could. What was Dean Winchester against three of Heaven's angels? They disappeared in the blink of an eye and Dean was left grasping at air.


	8. Heartbreaker

**1987**

* * *

**I.**

* * *

The new year didn't wait around to show what it was about. Dean looked up from news coverage of escalating battles in the Chadian–Libyan conflict on Bobby's shitty little TV to Bobby, who was sitting by the table with his bible index cards and several dusty tomes open in front of him and who said, "Something big is coming."

"Oh," was all Dean could muster. "Well, I don't know if you've heard, but there's an Apocalypse on."

Sam, summoned by their voices, appeared in the doorway. "What's going on?"

"Dean's being a fucking smartass," Bobby said. "Signs point to some big bad arriving soon."

"Okay well, we still have the Colt," Sam said, hopelessly pragmatic even in the face of annihilation. "It took out Lilith, so we can hope it'll take out whatever big bad the universe wants to throw at us next."

Bobby blew out a breath. "We've only got five bullets left, so don't waste 'em."

"Do we think it's Lucifer?" Dean interrupted. He had his eyes trained on the TV but he didn't watch what was happening on the screen.

"No, I don't think so. He's still enough angel that he can't possess people like a demon, he needs their consent. So he still doesn't have a vessel," Bobby said and slammed a book shut for emphasis. "I think we'll know when he does."

"Dean," Sam said. Dean held up a hand.

"Nuh-uh," he said. "Still not talking to you."

* * *

"Come on, Dean," Sam said in the car. "You can't keep this up forever."

"Watch me," Dean said.

"Ah-ha!" Sam said brightly. "You talked to me!"

"Doesn't count," Dean said, but then gave a groan and relented. "Did Ellen say anything other than 'demon-infested town'?"

"Not really," Sam admitted reluctantly. "She wanted the knife back."

"Yeah, well, you don't need it, not with your _secret demon killing powers."_

"I _said_ I'm not using those anymore, okay? Jesus." 

When Dean didn't reply, Sam huffed out an exasperated breath and leaned back in the passenger seat with his arms crossed.

* * *

Dean really wished he had a rifle instead of only his trusted ivory-gripped Colt when he entered The Roadhouse, one step ahead of Sam. The dark, boarded windows had alerted them to something being off, and Dean was on high alert. There was only one car outside besides the Harvelle's flatbed truck; a sleek, red Mustang that had made Dean whistle appreciatively.

Inside was deadly quiet, until it wasn't. Sudden movement made Dean jerk, but too late; getting holy water thrown in your face wasn't an experience that improved with repetition. Dean shook it off like a dog and blocked the blow of a sharpened stake with his arm.

"Whoah, Jo, it's me!" he said, and didn't block the knee to the stomach. He clutched his middle and bent over, blinking imploringly up at her.

"Your eyes," Jo said, looking intently back at him, fists up protectively, with the stake clutched in one of them. "You're not a demon."

"Thanks for noticing," Dean wheezed. 

"Whoah," Sam said, both hands up in deference to the man with a shotgun trained at them, from a few steps behind Jo. Presumably it was filled only with rock salt, to repel demons, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt like a son of a bitch. "What's going on here?"

"Close the door!" Jo commanded and backed up a few steps to let them in. "The demons are still out there."

Sam did as he was bid, and pushed a few chairs up against it for good measure while Dean methodically started to paint a devil's trap on the floor just inside the door.

"They've got Mom," Jo said desolately. "And Ash. I don't– they're both possessed. I couldn't exorcise them."

"Where are they now?" Dean asked softly. Seeing someone you loved possessed by a demon would do a number on you for sure, and Jo looked about as shaken as you would expect.

"Out in the woods," said the man, who'd finally clicked the safety back on the shotgun and lifted it. Dean turned his attention to him; he was about the same height as Dean, with close-cropped dark hair and bird-like features. He was dressed a hair too neatly for a hunter, in Dean's opinion, in a pressed button-down and dark jeans, but only a hunter would still be at the Roadhouse after a demon attack.

"This is Robert," Jo said and went back to the bar to refill her bottle of holy water. "He was here when the demons showed up; helped me drive them out."

"How many demons?" Sam asked.

"Just Mom and Ash," Jo said with a shaky sigh. "Don't know what I would've done without Robert here."

"Your car out there?" Dean asked with a jerk of his head. Robert nodded slowly. "Pretty sweet ride, for a hunter."

"Yours isn't so bad either," Robert said. "I saw you guys pull up. What kind of engine you got?"

Robert couldn't know that complimenting the Impala was the way to Dean's heart. Dean grinned and rolled up his proverbial sleeves to talk cylinders while they shored up something to track and trap demons without hurting their hosts.

* * *

In the end there was nothing for it. They had to go out hunting.

For all that they were hunters, Dean didn't particularly feel at home in the woods. Oh, he'd hunted enough monsters in them to know his way around, but for him, trees were mostly a nuisance behind which danger could lurk.

Robert seemed much the same; Dean's judgement of him as too neat for hunting was put to shame, however, when Robert stopped abruptly and held up a fist to stop them too.

"What?" Jo said, sharply.

Robert shook his head and indicated something on the forest floor. When Dean looked closely, he could make out the rope trap laid out, but how Robert had been able to spot it in the lack of light he couldn't understand.

"Let's move around," Robert said and took the lead.

"Demons who lay out traps?" Sam said in a hushed voice. "That's weird."

"Maybe they want Jo alive," Dean said dismissively. "Maybe they want to possess her too."

Somehow, Dean ended up taking the lead with Robert, with Sam and Jo bringing up the rear.

"So," Robert said. "You've been in the business for a while, I take it?"

Dean gave a joyless huff of laughter. "My whole life, or near enough," he said. "You?"

"More recent," Robert admitted and pushed some bushes aside with the barrel of his rifle. "My brother– he turned into a monster."

He left the rest unsaid, but Dean understood. Dean, who was too acquainted with losing family to monsters, said, "I'm sorry."

Robert gave him a tight, sad smile. "It's alright," he said and looked ahead. "It wasn't really him anymore."

Despite himself, Dean threw a look over his shoulder. Sam was walking half a step behind Jo, who looked pale and determined with her Palo Santo in hand. They were hoping they wouldn't have to use force, but fact remained, it was damn hard to exorcise demons if you didn't immobilize them first, and these demons would be too smart to be lured into a devil's trap. They were possessing Ash and Ellen, so they had to be smart. Sam met Dean's eyes and looked like he wanted to say something.

"I think," Robert said, loud enough to be meant for everyone, "we need to split up to find them."

"I don't know if that's a good idea," Sam said. But Dean looked at the seemingly endless forest and shook his head.

"I think Robert is right," he said, and Jo, who was eager to find her mom, agreed. Put upon, but outvoted, Sam had to go along with it

Ash and Ellen _were_ smart. That was how Dean walked into a trap almost immediately after they had broken up.

"Whoa, Dean!" Ash said with surprise in his voice when he walked out from the surrounding trees. He had to tilt his head to look at Dean, who was upside down. He looked none the worse for wear, if you didn't count the twigs stuck in his mullet. "How's it hanging?"

"Very funny," Dean said, before he got the second faceful of holy water in as many hours.

"Not a demon," Ellen said and pocketed the holy water. "Cut him down, Ash."

Dean blinked the water from his eyes. "Wait, _I'm_ not a demon? What about you?"

"We had to get out of the Roadhouse," Ellen said, and watched dispassionately as Dean fell to the forest floor in an undignified heap. "Somehow, Jo got possessed. I don't know–"

"Wait," Dean said again and got to his feet. "Jo? She said _you_ were possessed!"

Dean tried to think back, desperately. Jo hadn't helped with making the devil's trap. She hadn't gone out that way either; they'd all gone out the back. None of the holy water had splashed on her. Maybe–

"Game theory!" Ash said. "Dean, why don't you splash us in turn so you can be sure we're on the up and up."

They were. Dean pocketed the flask and picked up the gun he'd dropped. "We need to find them, before anyone gets hurt."

They did find them. Or rather, Sam, Jo, and Robert found Dean, Ellen and Ash. To Dean's horror, he saw that Jo's eyes were pitch black, where she stood half a step behind Sam.

Sam gasped when he saw Dean, and he held his hand out, like he was trying to exorcise Dean with his powers. It took Dean a second to realize what he was doing; Sam had promised not to use those powers anymore, and anyway, it wouldn't work on Dean because Dean _wasn't fucking possessed._ The whole thing made Dean think twice.

And after that second thought, Dean turned to Robert and drew the Colt. Not his ivory-gripped Colt, but the long-barrelled one with the bullets that could kill anything.

"Dean, no!" Jo shouted, but Sam grabbed her and held her back. A look passed between the brothers. A light had gone up for Sam too.

"Your car," Dean said to Robert. "A red Mustang. Seems a bit on the nose."

Robert's mouth drew into a smile like a bowstring. "You can't kill me," he said, and Dean couldn't understand how he could have mistaken him for human. "I'll be here as long as mankind sheds blood."

Instead of replying, Dean shot him.

War, the First Horseman of the fucking Apocalypse, might not die, but Robert sure did; he fell to the forest floor like any dead body. The only thing setting him apart from any other dead body was the fact that his death made the forest darkness feel a little lighter, and made the black of Jo's eyes melt away.

Dean watched Jo hug her mother with something like an ache in his chest. He couldn't quite bear to look at Sam just yet.

* * *

**Interlude**

* * *

They stayed at the Roadhouse another night. Ellen wouldn't hear of anything else. She told them, in no uncertain terms, that they needed a good night's sleep before they headed back out on the road.

Dean, who was staring at the smouldering wreck which was all that remained of Robert's — War's — red Mustang, nodded absently.

"Thank you, Dean," Jo told him quietly, when she showed him and Sam to their rooms above the bar.

"It's nothing," Dean said before he realized how stupid that sounded. He gave her a tired smile. "Anytime, Jo. Of course."

Alone in his room, he pulled off his boots and flannel and jeans before he crawled into bed. After a while — he had no idea how long — he crawled out again and put his bare knees on the wood floor and leaned his elbows on the bed.

Dean laced his fingers together and cleared his throat.

"Cas," he began uncertainly. "I don't know if you can hear me, but buddy, I– I could use your help right now." He paused. His heart was beating hard, which was weird, but, hell, in for a penny in for a pound, right? "Or, you know, I'd settle for just seeing you. Knowing you're alright, that'd be nice. I hope you're okay. Uh, amen, I guess."

Dean waited for a beat, for anything to happen. When nothing did, he sighed and heaved himself back up into the bed. His knees ached a bit from being pressed to the cold, hard floor for so long, and if he was honest with himself, he'd admit his heart was aching too.

* * *

**II.**

* * *

Knowing was half the battle, they said. But _knowing_ it was the Second Horseman of the Apocalypse they were going after didn't really make it easier, Dean reflected as he looked out over the diner that was crawling with people gorging themselves on food and, in one gruesome case, each other. They'd seen signs of it all over town; people's appetites exaggerated, made ravenous by a supernatural, apocalyptic presence.

There were enough of them that Dean didn't have a clean shot on Famine himself, the gaunt man in a black wheelchair, surrounded by lackeys bringing him — well, that was the catch. Sam and Dean had followed the demon carrying a briefcase here, without knowing what it contained. But that didn't matter, not when it had led them to their target.

"Welcome, Sam and Dean Winchester," Famine said, in a thin, reedy voice that somehow carried above the cacophony around him.

They advanced, Dean with the Colt and Sam with the demon knife. The knife wouldn't help bringing down Famine, but it did come in handy when one of the demons struck out, and Sam intercepted it to bring it down. They couldn't waste the bullets.

It wasn't a long struggle; Sam feinted and managed to slit the throat of the demon in one, decisive stroke. 

For some reason, it made Famine break out in hacking laughter. Dean didn't waver, but he waited for Sam to cover him before he advanced. It took him a second to realize Sam wasn't coming to cover him.

He turned to find Sam hunched over the dead demon. He must've sensed Dean looking at him, because he lifted his head up then, a look of helpless horror in his eyes. His mouth was lined with blood, and Dean's stomach turned.

"What are you doing to him?" Dean said, turning back to Famine, Colt raised. The demons moved in front of him protectively. The news about War must've spread.

"Doing?" Famine said and spread his desiccated hands. "I'm not _doing_ anything to him, my dear boy. I only bring out what he hungers for."

Fighting his way through five demons to get to him without firing the gun didn't seem like a plan with a great chance of succeeding, and the demons grinned when they realized his reluctance to fire.

"Demon blood?" Dean said. "Really? He's no damn vampire."

"No," Famine said as the demons circled Dean, grabbed him and wrested the Colt from his hands and dragged him before the second Horseman of the Apocalypse. "What he hungers for is power."

Dean heard a grotesque, squelching noise from behind him, and in a way he was grateful that he wasn't able to look around to see what made it. He was less grateful for being pushed to his knees in front of the wheelchair, head yanked up by the hair to look Famine in the eye.

Famine's eyes were sunken into his face, an endless, deep, dark. He gave a skeletal grin.

"What I hunger for is souls. What do you hunger for, Dean Winchester?" he said and reached out a hand to touch Dean's cheek. Dean jerked away from it, but in vain. Famine's fingers were deathly cold, and Dean could feel the chill spread in his body from the point of contact. "What do you hunger for?" Famine repeated, this time searchingly.

The cold made him numb, and when Famine retracted his hand, Dean felt petrified. Famine's deep, dark eyes blinked, stupefied.

"Nothing," he said, which cut through Dean's numbness. "There is nothing you yearn for."

"I eat when I'm hungry," Dean said, lips moving sluggishly. "I drink when I'm thirsty, I fuck when I'm horny. I don't do that repression bullshit."

Famine shook his head. His teeth were bared, but not in a smile. "There's nothing you yearn for, Dean Winchester, because you think there's nothing left for you to yearn for. You feel hopeless. You have no purpose."

Another squelching sound, and Dean felt the demons' grip on him waver and loosen, before he heard the roar and smelled the stench of sulphur of demons being exorcised.

Dean very nearly faceplanted before he could shake the sluggishness from his limbs and scramble to his feet. He found Sam still kneeling by the demon corpse, but he'd straightened his back and was staring back at Dean defiantly, even if his chest heaved with exertion.

"You feel dead inside," Famine told him, when Dean picked up the Colt with shaking hands.

"Join the club," Dean said, and shot Famine too, at point blank.

Dean didn't much want to stick around for the aftermath of the people shaking off the apocalyptic stupor, so he walked over to Sam and reached out a hand to help him to his feet. Sam accepted the help. His hand was slippery with blood, but Dean grabbed his wrist and braced so that Sam could pull himself up.

* * *

When they were safely in the Impala and driving away from the carnage, Sam said, "That felt–" and broke off.

"Too easy?" Dean filled in, with a pointed look to Sam's blood-stained clothes and face.

Sam shook his head ruefully. "Well," he said. "Don't you have a feeling these Horsemen sort of want to be found?"

"Maybe," Dean said. "Maybe it's just that they know that killing them after they've appeared doesn't make a difference in the big scheme of things."

"Maybe not," Sam said with a sigh. He was quiet for a bit, but then he added, with that annoying insight he sometimes had, "But it made a difference for those people in that town. It made a difference for Ellen and Jo."

Dean shook his head once, ruefully. More of a neck stretch, really. "Yeah, okay," he said. "It's not like I'm saying we _shouldn't_ kill the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Hey, two out of four ain't so bad!"

"No, it isn't," Sam said with a little laugh. And then, because the little shit couldn't let up on the insights; "Hey, so what Famine said– you wanna talk about it?"

"Absolutely not," Dean said, hands steady on the wheel and eyes steady on the road.

"I thought you said you didn't repress shit," Sam pointed out mildly.

"I don't! Sam, I meant what I said. I get what I want, when I want it."

"And what do you want?" 

Sam said it lightly, like the question didn't cut right to Dean's core.

"I want you to lay off the demonic powers," Deansaid, sharply.

Sam huffed out a breath, and Dean was reasonably sure he'd been able to sideline that particular conversation.

"You have to admit they came in pretty handy," Sam said, with a meaningful gesture. Dean shook his head again.

"Yeah, but at what cost? An addiction to demon blood?" Sam crossed his arms, which told Dean Sam knew he was right, but didn't want to admit it. He went on, "Sam, I know what it's like to be addicted to something. It's never worth it, and you gotta kick the habit before you can't."

"What, like you and cigarettes?" Sam said with a scoff.

"Hey, no-one told me they were bad for my health until it was way too late!" Dean said, quietly grateful that that was the one Sam had latched onto.

* * *

**III.**

* * *

Getting rid of a demon blood addiction was uglier than most.

Dean's pacing pushed Bobby out after a couple of hours. He didn't try to tell Dean to settle down; he just left. And Dean was left walking back and forth, up and down Bobby's cellar.

The space outside the bunker where Sam weathered his unnatural withdrawal symptoms was ten and a half steps from staircase to door, and then four steps across. When Dean heard a noise from inside the warded and padded bunker — a shout or a crash or a whimper — he would pause mid-step even though there was absolutely nothing he could do.

The sudden sound of wings in the enclosed space made his stomach drop. Dean didn't dare hope, but when he turned, it _was_ Castiel standing at the bottom of the stairs. He still had the same messy black hair and the same crooked blue tie, like he'd never been gone.

On instinct, without thinking about it, Dean reached over and clasped Cas by the shoulders, wanting to make sure he was really there, that it was really him. The sight of him sparked joyous relief in Dean that soon ignited a deep indignation.

"Cas! Where the hell have you been?" he asked, pulse pounding in his temples, the warmth of Cas' body radiating through the fabric of his clothes, the coat smooth underneath Dean's palms. "Are you okay? I fucking– I prayed to you, man."

"I know," Cas said, flatly. He looked Dean in the eyes, like he always did, but then his gaze flickered away, like he couldn't bear to hold the contact. "I've come to stop what you're doing."

"Stop– From doing what?" Dean thought he'd become pretty good at reading Cas, but as his gaze traveled searchingly over his face, the angel seemed like a stone wall before him. 

"Imprisoning Sam," he said, eyes returning to Dean's. "He needs the demon blood."

"The hell he does," Dean said. It was punctuated by a hoarse scream from inside the bunker, and Dean flinched, taking his hands off Cas.

"He does," Cas said, unmoved. "Let him out."

"What the hell happened to you up there?" Dean said and crossed his arms; it wasn't the forbidding gesture he wished it was; he was just hugging himself. As something resembling a smile passed over Castiel's face, Dean realized there was something flinty in his blue eyes, something that had been tempered by empathy before but wasn't now.

"They took me to Heaven. Vessel and all," Cas said and held out his hands as if to say 'look at me'. "They explained to me how I've grown too attached to the human under my protection. Too emotional."

The look Cas leveled Dean with left no room for misunderstanding who the human in question was. Dean swallowed and pulled at the one thread he felt able to pick at: "What do you mean, 'vessel and all'?"

"I mean," Cas said calmly, though Dean saw him flex his hands; curling his fingers into fists and back again, "that human souls cannot enter Heaven and leave again."

"What, so you– the person, the body you're in, is dead?"

Cas flexed his hands again. It didn't seem to be a conscious movement. "Yes."

Dean blew out a breath and raked his fingers through his hair.

"Do not mourn," Cas said then. He pressed his hands flat to his stomach, creasing his trenchcoat. "Jimmy Novak is in Heaven now, with his beloved wife."

"You know, that really isn't the comfort you think it is," Dean said with a pointed look Cas' way. "What's this really about, Cas?"

* * *

Dean stormed out. It was stupid, of course. Cas could find him anywhere. And Cas did find him after just a couple minutes, appearing outside the house where Dean was wearing grooves in the patch of dirt that passed for Bobby's backyard.

A no-talking policy probably wasn't going to fly with someone that wasn't his brother, so even though Dean had no idea how to talk around the hurt, the _betrayal_ of what Cas had told him, he still tried.

"You killed Uriel over this," Dean said without turning around to look at him. "And now you've, you turned your coat and gone over to his side!"

Though he couldn't know, he sensed that Cas burred up his feathers. So maybe he'd ruffled 'em a little.

"That was before you set Lucifer free," Cas said. "Dean."

"Don't _'Dean'_ me!" Dean snarled, turning around on one foot. "What you're asking us to do — even if we don't take into account the fact that it means us _whoring out_ our bodies for angelic possession — would mean, and I quote _you,_ untold suffering! The goddamn the end of the world, Cas!"

"No, Dean," Cas said, but his earlier rock-like calm had cracked into something closer to a fervour, inscrutable emotion etched into his face and darkening his eyes. "It would mean _saving_ the world from the Devil! Killing the Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a– a stopgap measure, at best! This will not end until Lucifer is ended."

"You mean until Sam is dead," Dean said. "That's what you're saying, isn't it? It doesn't matter that it'll be an archangel pulling my strings and the Devil his. It's going to be me killing Sam to save the world."

"I wish there was another way," Cas said. His hair was even messier than it had been when he showed up — the wind was tearing at it mercilessly, tugging at the lapels of his coat, and his tie too. "But you are the Righteous Man, and Michael's chosen vessel. This is your destiny."

"Fuck," Dean said, pressing both palms to his temples. "Fuck, Cas. If it was just me, but it's not. I can't– I can't ask that of Sam. I can't _do_ that to him."

"You're not the one asking," Cas said. "God is."

Dean drew in a deep breath. "So you found Him?"

Cas shifted. The movement was incongruous, noticeably standing out from Castiel's usual habitus. "I have faith," he said, which was no answer at all.

Dean shook his head and grabbed for the pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. He wasn't wearing his denim jacket, which had the lighter in the breast pocket, but he had a small envelope of Bobby's old friction matches in the same pocket as the cigarettes, from when he'd been burning garbage in a barrel in just this backyard earlier, and he pulled it out.

He flipped the little, red envelope back and forth between his fingers and watched Cas.

"I used to have faith too," Dean said and pulled out a cigarette from the pack in his back pocket with one hand. "Not in God– I never used to believe in Him. Why would I?"

The tip of the friction match was coated in white, unlike the red sulphur of safety matches. Dean looked at it and went on, "But I had faith in my dad. In Sam– that they'd have my back. That's what we can count on. Each other."

The wind rustled through the trees that lined the back yard on one side. The salvage yard on the other side lay quiet.

"You have faith in me, then?" Cas said, quietly.

Dean sucked his mouth dry and swallowed. He opened his mouth then and struck the match to the back of his front teeth. It ignited past his lips, washing heat over his face, and he fit the cigarette between his teeth to light it.

"Well, I used to, anyway," Dean said around the cigarette, and shook the match slowly until it extinguished. He dragged in a lungful of smoke. "And I would have a hell of a lot more faith in God if the bastard would show up to help every once in a while."

"Then come with me," Cas said then, which made the cigarette between Dean's lips wobble precariously. "Let's find God together."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Bender from The Breakfast Club does the match trick](https://youtu.be/uL_C29H-bYo?t=89)


	9. Nobody's Fault But Mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note this chapter contains a trigger warning for mention of HIV/AIDS, in an 80s/Supernatural context. If you don't want to read about it, skip the entire part II. of this chapter. A summary of it can be found in the end notes!

* * *

**I.**

* * *

Back in Bobby's kitchen, Dean had made them coffee. Why he didn't know; it made him jittery, and Cas didn't touch the cup in front of him. Bobby was still out, and Sam, God help him, was still in the bunker.

"Alright, track down the archangel Raphael's former vessel which he used to cast demons back down to Hell, summon Raphael to ask him where the hell God is, and then asking him nicely not to smite us before we then find God himself. I'd call that a game plan," Dean said and knocked his knuckles against the handle of the mug.

"I don't know if I would call it a _plan,"_ Cas said and peered down at his untouched cup. "A hopeless venture, at most."

"Okay then, Mr. Blue Sky," Dean muttered. For his own sanity, he tried not to think about the fact that an angel was willing to go out on a limb like this to convince _him._ "A hopeless venture then."

* * *

They went to Maryland, of all places, but not before Cas had touched Dean's breast bone, which was followed by a brief but searing pain and Cas' solemn proclamation that "This will hide you from the host of Heaven." Instead of tattoos, Cas had inscribed Dean's ribs with Enochian runes. Cool, thanks a bunch. For all that Dean had tattoos, he really wasn't into body modifications.

Getting back into the FBI getup wasn't a bad idea, and with the help of Bobby's forgery kit, making a badge for Cas had been child's play. Childlike was also the look of confusion on Cas' face when Dean had to pull it from his hand and flip it right side up when he showed it to the receptionist at the asylum. Dean had been told "asylum" wasn't the term _du jour_ anymore, but that's what it was. Better than calling it the "loony bin" at any rate.

"Is this what's going to happen to me if I say yes to Michael?" Dean asked quietly, eyes trained on the man in the wheelchair. The look in his eyes could be described as 'We're calling, but no-one's home.'

"It's possible," Cas said, eyes trained on the same. "An archangel is– the power contained by a vessel is incomprehensible." A pause. "Jimmy Novak, in one of his lucid moments, told me it was like being chained to a comet. And I'm low-ranking, barely anything in comparison to an archangel."

"Huh. Great." Dean shook himself out of horrified reverie and told Cas, "Do your thing."

Cas poured a circle around the wheelchair with what he called holy oil. He painted sigils with blood spilled from his vessel that wasn't a vessel anymore so much as just Cas' own body, before he sealed the cuts with a touch.

Dean found himself looking at him differently. He'd known all along that it was an angel moving the body, and the thought of having another angel moving _his_ made something twist in his gut. But Cas inhabited this body so surely now, moved in it like it truly was his own, that Dean found himself wanting to touch him again, to see if it felt different now that he knew.

Cas stepped back and Dean straightened up. He supposed it was showtime. Cas made a gesture and uttered a word, a single, guttural syllable that made the hair stand up on the back of Dean's neck, and the holy oil ignited in flame. Unbidden, Johnny Cash's _Burning Ring of Fire_ came to Dean's mind, and he was struck by the sudden, hysterical want to hum the melody.

The first thing that happened was that the lights in the entire building went out. The second thing was that the man in the wheelchair stood up, and the fire around him belched out smoke that stung Dean's eyes.

The man blinked, and the white light that Dean had learned to associate with angels, spilled out of his eyes before he blinked and it faded away. But Dean knew it was there.

"What," said the man, and though Dean couldn't see them, he could sense his wings strain against whatever confinement the holy oil provided, "is the meaning of this, Castiel?"

"I must ask a favor of you, Raphael," Castiel said. "We need to find God."

Raphael opened his mouth and laughed. It was an unnatural sound; like he knew what a laugh was supposed to be like and mimicked it, without knowing that a laugh could be a spontaneous, involuntary reaction.

"Why have you brought the Righteous Man with you? Isn't he supposed to offer up himself to be Michael's Sword, to cast down the Devil?"

"Your sale's pitch isn't the best," Dean offered dryly. It was sarcastic, sure, but his mouth was also dry. "You need me to say 'I do' before Michael takes over the wheel, and I haven't been sufficiently wooed yet."

"Not by Michael, no," Raphael said, with a weighted look at Castiel. Dean looked at Cas too, trying to make sense of what Raphael meant. But Cas cast his eyes down, and Dean felt something he didn't want to look at too closely turn over in his stomach. "Brother, let me out."

"We need to talk to God," Cas said, eyes flicking up to meet Raphael's piercing gaze.

"That's too bad," Raphael said. "I believe the phrase is 'Elvis has left the building.' There is no God anymore."

"You mean He's dead," Dean said. It wasn't a surprise, but he'd never been less happy to be right. 

"Dead, gone, what does it matter," Raphael said, with an imperial gesture of dismissal. "He's not here, and He hasn't been for a long, long time. It's up to us, little brother. Let me out and I'll make this human see the right path."

The words bore such a weight of foreboding that Dean felt a shiver rip down his spine. He didn't dare look at Cas for fear of what he'd find when he did.

"No."

The single syllable was uttered with such conviction that Dean did look at Cas then. Cas stared at Raphael, the flames painting him in flickering reds and yellows. "No," Cas repeated. "I _believed_ in you. I followed your orders because I thought my Father was acting through you. How can you expect me to take your word for anything any longer, Raphael?"

Raphael bared his teeth, made red by the fire, and said, "Because, little brother, when this holy oil burns out, I don't need our Father to put the fear of God in you."

Dean thought of Johnny Cash taking the side of people down on their luck. Cas could use someone like the Man in Black, but for lack of someone like him, Dean grabbed Cas by the sleeve and dragged him out of there.

* * *

Back at Bobby's once more, as the angel was painting warding sigils all around the place, Dean tried to get Cas to talk to him.

"Hey, Cas, slow down," Dean said, trailing after him where he was pacing the perimeter of the salvage yard. Cas stopped so suddenly, Dean nearly walked into him.

"This place is safe now," Cas said. "No angels will be able to find it. Not even me, when I leave here."

"So don't leave," Dean said and dared to reach out a hand and touch Cas' sleeve. "Cas, c'mon, what's up?"

"What's _up?"_ Cas repeated, incredulously, and turned to look at him. To see the hurt laced with horror shining out of his eyes made Dean's heart thud painfully. "Didn't you hear Raphael? God is gone, and I've– Everything I ever believed in was a _lie."_

"That's not– Cas," Dean said, because Cas' eyes had slipped away from his and he needed Cas to believe what he was saying. "I know something about deadbeat dads, okay?"

Dean swallowed, but went on when Cas did look up at him again. "You think that everything you do, you do to make them proud. But nothing you do is ever enough, right? And then one day– one day it's too late. They're gone, they'll never be able to give you– whatever it was you wanted from them. And you gotta start doing things for yourself. Because of who _you_ are."

Cas' eyelashes fluttered in a blink. The blue of his eyes shone from under them, and the only thing to show the inner tumult he experienced was the deep line between his eyebrows. His lips were slightly parted over the white of his teeth, and Dean had to fight not to look at his mouth, standing this close to each other.

"Dean," Cas said. "I will show you a sigil that will banish an angel to Heaven. If they come after you. Any angel."

The sigil was relatively simple. A circle, with a harsh, zig-zag slash bisecting it, flanked by a symbol on each side.

"It must be drawn in blood," Castiel said, touching the marks he'd drawn up in the earth. "And when you press your palm to it–" He pressed his hand flat on top of it, smearing the dirt. "–the power is activated and the angel is banished."

Dean thought of the handprint that still sat on his shoulder, though faded now by time, and touched it reflexively. He didn't dare ask Cas how permanent such a banishment would be. He had thought his own was permanent enough. With a shiver, he recalled the feeling of his intestines being pulled out, and his life blood deserting him in spurts.

"You were the one who restored my body, right?" When Cas looked up from his crouched position and nodded, Dean said, "So you remade all my ink too. Make that a tattoo for me, so I don't forget."

Cas stood up without brushing the dirt from his knees.

"You'll have to show me the place", he said, and there was something, unnameable in his gaze when he looked at Dean. Dean swallowed.

"Alright," he said. "Let's go inside." He wasn't about to strip here, no matter how many warding sigils Cas had put in place. It was cold, for one.

Inside had another downside though. Bobby showed up and demanded to know where the hell they'd been. He looked ruffled enough that Dean didn't have the heart to tease him for worrying.

So not only did Dean have to take off his jacket, flannel, and t-shirt in front of Cas, he had to do it while telling Bobby the whole sorry story of how God was MIA and they had a pissed-off archangel on their ass.

Oh, and all this because, according to whoever was in charge of Heaven now, Sam had to get possessed by Lucifer, so that Dean, possessed by the archangel Michael, could kill him.

"Sweet mother of fucking Christ," Bobby said and sat down in a chair, heavily.

Dean, who was already sitting, made a face at him, before he looked to Cas and indicated a spot on his right arm, just below his deltoid. It wasn't ideal — he'd have to pull up the sleeve of his t-shirt if he needed to take a look at it. He'd started on his left arm, back in the day, and that one was full up, but there wasn't much space left on his right arm either.

Although when Cas fit his hand on the spot, perhaps unconsciously mirroring the grip that he'd branded on Dean's other shoulder when he'd pulled him out of Hell, and felt a thousand pinpricks concentrated to one second, Dean thought that maybe he wouldn't have to look this particular symbol up again. It was branded to his skin now, in bold black, but it was also branded in his mind.

This symbol would banish angels to Heaven. Cas too, and Cas had trusted Dean with this knowledge. It sat heavily in Dean's stomach.

* * *

**II.**

* * *

Having Cas working in stealth mode was infinitely better than having no Cas at all. That was made abundantly clear when Cas found out where Pestilence was and brought himself and Dean there in the blink of an eye.

"His power radiates," Cas told Dean in a low voice as Dean looked around in what looked like the store room of any corporate building. “This is as close as I can get us."

"Good enough," Dean declared. "We'll know him when we see him."

"I fear my brothers and sisters will be able to track me, now that I'm outside of the wards I put up," Cas said as Dean looked out into the corridor, carefully.

"Don't use your angel powers then," Dean said and stepped out. "They seem to act like a beacon. Besides, all we need is this Colt." He patted the lining of his jeans, where the Colt was pressing reassuringly against his skin

Cas gave him an unimpressed look and let the angel blade slide out of his sleeve.

As they followed some innate sense of direction Cas possessed and traversed the building that was oddly devoid of people, Dean tried to puzzle out what it was for — something between an office and a hospital, he thought, seeing equipment through the windows in the doors they passed. The lack of people, though eerie, wasn't surprising, given that it was the middle of the night.

It was a lab, he realized at long last, when they entered a room where a whole wall was covered by a shelf filled with vials and some expensive-looking equipment off to one side that reminded Dean of a distillery. A man in a white lab coat was standing by it, and looked at them with a gobsmacked expression of someone who had not expected to see two guys with murderous intent break into his lab.

Without hesitation, Dean pulled out the Colt and took aim. Cas held out his hand and said, "No, he's human."

Dean lowered the gun but didn't take his eyes off the man. "What is this place?"

"A m–medical lab," the man said, eyes trained on the lowered gun, clearly scared out of his wits. "We produce medicine! Please don't hurt me."

"We won't hurt you," Cas said. "We're looking for Pestilence."

"What– is that a brand?" the man said. Dean rolled his eyes. Was this the state of pharmaceutics in this country?

"What kind of medicine do you make here?" he asked and gestured to the vials with the gun. The man flinched. Dean rolled his eyes again and tucked the gun back into his waistline.

"It's, um, it's called azidothymidine," the man said and eyed Dean a smidge less nervously. "It's a, a, um, an antiretroviral medication."

"Do you think maybe Pestilence is here to, I don't know, destroy the stock?" Dean asked Cas, in a lowered voice.

"Maybe," Cas allowed, with a furrowed brow.

"What's the medication for?" Dean asked the man, who had started edging toward the door. He froze and blinked at them.

"It's for, um. Look, you're not some crazy Christian fundamentalists, are you?"

"No," Dean said with a glance Cas' way. He tried to tamp down on the urge to laugh. "No, I wouldn't say we are. Why?"

"Look, I'll tell you if you let me go. I won't tell anyone, hell, I just work here!"

"Fine!" Dean said and put his hand on his waist, pointedly. "We'll let you go, just tell us what the hell this medicine is for!"

"It's to treat GRID," the man said and wiped his palms on his white lab coat. "We call it HIV and AIDS, now."

Dean froze.

The man took his chance and bolted. Cas made a move to stop him, but he seemed to realize Dean's state and aborted the gesture to turn back to him.

"What's the matter, Dean?"

Dean shook his head, once, like he was trying to shake water out of his ear.

"He said GRID," he said. "That stands for 'gay-related immune deficiency'."

Cas said nothing. It didn't seem to spark a particular reaction in him.

Dean drew in a deep breath. He knew several who'd gotten it, and by now, most of them were gone. This disease was an ugly thing, Dean knew, making you waste away slowly, and often alone because doctors were afraid of catching it, and they would only let family in, and not many hunters and other people on the margins had any family that they were close to.

"Let's find Pestilence and kill him," Cas said, seriously, never looking away from Dean's eyes. "Before he can do any more harm than he already has."

As if to punctuate Cas' statement, an alarm blared throughout the building. Dean cursed the unknown name of the lab technician they'd let away, and shoulder to shoulder, he and Cas hurried out of the room to find Pestilence and put a stop to him.

* * *

They did find Pestilence on the third floor, looking out over the loading area at the back of the facility. Dean would have known it even if Cas hadn't said his name, because as soon as Dean saw him, he was immediately overcome by an acute sense of nausea. It was all he had to keep his knees from buckling under it.

"Oh, hello," Pestilence said and eyed Dean dismissively. He had big ears, and his nose and eyes were red-rimmed, but he looked very neat in his button up shirt and white coat.

"What did you do?" Dean said, swallowing back bile. His vision was starting to swim, white flashes threatening at the edge of it.

"What did _I_ do? Absolutely nothing," Pestilence said with a smile. "That's the beauty of this country. The people in charge have already done nothing to stop this particular, beautiful, beautiful disease from spreading. I just have to see to it that they keep doing nothing. I figured one or two horrible side effects from the medication to a small percentage of those treated ought to stop manufacturing. Who knows if they'll even try to make another."

Dean, who was incredibly uninterested in the monologue of the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse, took aim. But whatever was affecting him made his hand unsteady, and the shot went wide, shattering a window behind Pestilence.

Pestilence, absolutely impervious to the wind now whipping his silver-white hair, regarded him calmly as Dean finally gave in and sagged to his knees. He was seconds away from throwing up, and he had a horrible suspicion that if he started to throw up, he wouldn't stop until the lining of his stomach came up too. He carefully let go of the Colt, so that some sickly spasm wouldn't make him fire off the last bullet into the floor.

He was breathing in hard, short bursts now, and Dean feared he was about to join the gun where it lay on the floor, its cool metal gleaming. He sensed, more than perceived, Pestilence shift his attention to Castiel, effectively writing Dean off.

"And what have we here?" Pestilence said and strode over to Cas, who, Dean realized with a sinking feeling, wasn't standing either. "A little angel of the Lord, brought to his knees by little old me? My, my. How come?"

Dean was on all fours now and had to watch Pestilence touch a slimy hand to Cas, who seemed powerless to resist. And Dean was powerless to do anything other than watch.

"Oh, I see," Pestilence said. "The body — it's yours now. And so it affects you, like bodies do. Ah, disease gets the bad rep, but really, it's the bodies that break down under the methodical, _orderly_ work of, say, a virus."

"Have you ever heard of the second law of thermodynamics?" Cas gasped, bracing one hand on the floor.

"What?" Pestilence said, sounding amused.

He seemed less amused, when Cas lunged upward and impaled him with his blade. Dean could see the silver tip of it protruding out of the back, staining the white of his coat red.

"Isolated systems, like a body, evolve toward thermodynamic equilibrium," Cas said, hoarsely, into his ear. "Which means bodies break down on their own, over time. No need for you to hasten the process."

Pestilence uttered a choked sound and slumped down. Cas let the body slide off his blade, and heaved himself upright.

The nausea and dizziness was slowly abating, and Dean could shake himself out of the stupor soon enough. He tucked the Colt back into his jeans and let Cas help him to his feet, his palm reassuringly warm and dry and steady when Dean clasped it.

"His death will have alerted my siblings," Cas said, and Dean was surprised to notice he sounded out of breath. "We need to get out of here."

* * *

**III.**

* * *

Dean had never dared ask Cas how much angels could see of him. How much _Cas_ had seen, when he pulled Dean out of Hell. How much of what made up Dean did Cas know? Not much, Dean had presumed, since Cas hadn't batted an eye before standing up for him, standing _by_ him.

"What I don't get," Dean said, looking at Cas like he would disappear if he looked away, "is why Heaven sent you back." _To me,_ he didn't say, but Cas seemed to pick up on it anyway. 

"They thought that I held sway over you," Cas said. They were standing in a cornfield somewhere — Iowa, Dean assumed, just because it was a cornfield. The wind was rustling the dry stalks. "That because you had touched me, I could touch you in turn, and convince you of the righteous path."

"That didn't work out so good for them, did it?" Dean said with a grin. The corners of Cas' full mouth tugged upward, but his eyes remained serious. He looked away from Dean and heaved a deep sigh.

"They're going to find me," he said and looked to the star-studded sky. Dean craned his neck too, and he let the vastness of space wash over him. "I can send you away to safety."

"Why not send us both?" Dean said, pulse thudding uncomfortably in his throat.

Cas shook his head. "They're too close. They would be able to track me." He reached out a hand, two fingers, and Dean deflected his arm with his own.

"Whoa, whoa!" he said, gripping Cas' arm tight. "Cas! I'm not letting them take you back to angel jail to brainwash you again!"

"I won't let them take me," Cas said, sounding for all the world like an outlaw in a John Wayne cowboy picture. "Besides, the important thing is to keep you safe. Don't say yes to Michael."

"I won't," Dean promised. He caught Cas' gaze, willing the eye contact to convey what he couldn't in words. But Cas' gaze slipped down, and for a brief, breathless moment, Dean thought it caught on his mouth.

But then Cas smiled, a sad, small smile, and clasped Dean's shoulder. Exactly where he had tattooed the angel banishing symbol what felt like a lifetime ago.

"Be safe," Cas said, his eyes a deep, dark blue in the night when they found their way back to Dean's. For the first time, Dean thought that he might be able to give Cas a kiss, and Cas would welcome it. For the first time, he allowed himself to imagine the soft press of Cas' lips against his own, and telling Cas through touch rather than words, how much he meant to him.

And then Dean blinked and found himself back in Bobby's kitchen, dark and empty at this time of night.

"Fuck!" he said, loud enough to wake the entire house, and slammed both his fist to the kitchen table. "Fuck, god dammit, Cas!"

* * *

**Exitlude**

* * *

Elsewhere, in the middle of a cornfield under a star-studded sky, a lonely figure in a dirty trenchcoat stood surrounded by five in suits. If you blinked, perhaps you could see the towering shapes of their wings in the night. Without trying, you would see the shining silver of their weapons.

"Give it up, Castiel," one of the figures in suits said. "Tell us where the Righteous Man is. You know his brother will cave."

"I know no such thing," the figure in the trenchcoat said.

In the fight that ensued, the trenchcoat was ripped off one shoulder, and the sleeve of the suit underneath was torn open. A desperate surge put some distance between him and the rest, and, narrow chest heaving, he tried to keep them all at that distance.

But they were five and he was one, so what the figure in the trailing trenchcoat did was pull apart the white dress shirt he wore under his suit, to reveal a symbol carved bloody into his narrow chest. A circle, with a harsh, zig-zagging slash bisecting it, flanked by a symbol on each side.

Before it could give any of the five pause, the figure pressed his own, bloody palm to the symbol, igniting it in a furious flash of white. It enveloped every single one of them, and when it faded, the wind was rustling through an empty, scorched cornfield.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part II. summary: Dean and Cas break into a facility and corner a lab technician who under gunpoint tells them the lab manufactures a treatment for AIDS. Dean freezes and the technician gets away. Dean and Cas find Pestilence and Dean fires at him, but being in his presence makes him sick, and he misses. Cas also becomes sick, because, as Pestilence tells him, inhabiting a body is to be affected by it. But Cas still has enough power to stab him to death, and then whisk Dean and himself away.


	10. Bring It On Home

* * *

**I.**

* * *

"Well, there's only one Horseman of the Apocalypse left, right?" Sam said, at long last, after Dean had brought the household up to speed. 

He looked terrible; his long, brown hair was lanky and tangled, the bruises under his eyes were so pronounced that they leached color from his eyes in the yellow light from the overhead lamp, but he was sitting upright at Bobby's kitchen table, so that wasn't nothing. He was in a t-shirt and sweatpants, and Bobby had clearly thrown his shirt and pants on over his pajamas. Only Dean was fully dressed, and the Colt lay on the table, a stark reminder of where he'd been and what they had still to do.

"But I don't know that Death is something you can  _ kill,"  _ Bobby said, with emphasis. He shifted in his chair and groaned. Dean, who was staring at the two fingers of whiskey Bobby had poured him as soon as he'd come down and seen his face, could guess what the groan meant. _ I'm getting too old for this shit.  _ Well, yeah, who wasn't?

"Yeah, but we know reapers can be trapped," Sam said and glanced Dean's way. "Maybe we can trap – Death."

"We've gotta find him first!" Bobby said and pulled a hand over his beard. "Problem is Death's all over. Hard to pin down."

"Maybe not," Dean said. It was the first thing he'd said in a long while, and both Sam and Bobby looked surprised. 

"The reaper who— Tessa was her name. You freed her, Sam. She said she might owe you a favor. I say we try to get her to pay it back. Tell us where to find Death and stop him."

"Oh," Sam said. "That's... That actually sounds like a good plan."

Any other time Dean would've flashed a shit-eating grin and said, "Yeah, duh!" But this time Dean only shrugged and downed his whiskey decisively.

"I'll go dig through the lore on ways to summon a reaper," Bobby said and stood up.

He left the two brothers in the kitchen. Sam shifted, and Dean knew, from just years and years of familiarity, that Sam was going to say something he didn't want to hear.

"I'm sure Cas will be alright," Sam said.

Dean barked a laugh and pressed his palm flat to the grainy wood of the kitchen table. He wished he had more whiskey.

"Just 'cause he has been so far is no guarantee, Sammy," he said bitterly.

"No," Sam agreed, and the corner of his mouth tugged upward. "But he's a stubborn one. I wonder where he gets it from."

Dean gave him a look. "The hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I mean," Sam said, openly smiling now, "that you've had as big an impact on him as he has on you."

Dean decided that protesting that statement would be protesting too much, so instead he said, "How are you feeling?"

That made the corners of Sam's mouth point downward again. He pushed the hair that threatened to fall over his face behind one ear and sighed.

"When I was delusional," he began slowly. "I saw him. The Devil. Lucifer, whatever. I don't know how he could find me, but at least he can't possess me without my say-so, or, like,  _ get  _ to me. He can only haunt my dreams. He– he really wants me to say yes."

Dean opened his mouth, but Sam hurried to continue, "I won't! It's just– He makes a really good case. But he's the Prince of Lies, right?"

"Right," Dean said and thought uncomfortably about Raphael, who had torn down everything Castiel had held as truth in less than a sentence. "What did he say?"

Sam swallowed audibly. "That he can put a stop to all that's happening. That he doesn't want the Apocalypse to happen any more than we do."

* * *

Tessa didn't exactly seem overjoyed to be summoned into Bobby's bunker, which still bore some signs of Sam's time in there. She zeroed in on Dean with her sharp, pale eyes and said, "Alright, last I saw  _ you,  _ you were dead."

"Yeah, that didn't stick," Dean said with a shrug.

"What's dead should stay dead," Tessa said, with a conviction that made something cold run down Dean's spine. "You're messing with an order that's much bigger than you."

"If Sam had stayed dead, you might still be trapped by some right-wing religious nuts," Dean said, pointedly. Tessa made a face but didn't argue. "Look, did you mean it when you said you owed him a favor for setting you free?"

Tessa looked over at Sam, who shifted nervously.

"A favor, sure," she said. "But I won't do just anything."

"We're not asking for just anything," Sam said, evenly. "We need to find Death. And, um, preferably a way to stop him, from, well, executing the Apocalypse. Pun not intended."

"I can't help you with the second thing, because that's impossible. Death is Death, and death will happen with or without the Apocalypse," Tessa said, with an unimpressed quirk of her eyebrows. "But I can tell you where to find him."

"Well, that's a start," Dean said with a carefree gesture of his hand. They could always figure out the rest later.

* * *

Sam was in no fit state to face down Death. "Fourth time's the charm," Dean said and tucked the old Colt into the holster under his denim jacket instead of his usual gun. Bobby appraised him unhappily.

"I don't like sending you in alone," he said. Sam made a noise of assent.

"Too bad," Dean said and thought about Castiel, impaling the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse on his blade. "I'm not risking anyone else."

Thanks to Tessa, he found Death, in a diner in Detroit of all places. The place wasn't packed but it was bustling, and still Dean could make him out immediately. If the black suit or the marked cheekbones wasn't a giveaway, the large scythe resting against the red covering of the seat left little doubt as to who was occupying the booth.

"Why don't you sit down, Dean?" Death said, before Dean could even reach under his jacket. The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse had a pleasant voice, not especially deep, and it was not what Dean had expected. Dean who, despite of himself, felt quite intimidated, did as he was bid.

He'd always trusted his gut, and didn't see any reason to stop now. Something told him that it was best to listen, and no one except himself seemed to be in immediate danger. Dean slid down in the seat opposite and eyed Death warily.

"You hungry?" Death asked.

"Uh," Dean said, eloquently. Unbothered, Death pushed a plate over to Dean's side of the table, and he looked down at the pizza on the plate, cut into a neat square.

"All the talk about deep dish or New York style pizza," Death said, chewing thoughtfully. "No one ever mentions Detroit's square pizza."

"For good reason, probably," Dean said. "I mean, what's the deal? It's cut in a square, whoop-de-fucking-doo."

The skin stretched across Death's face in a grin. "Take a bite, be the judge."

Dean glanced down at the plate again and then back up. "Thanks, but I'm not hungry."

Death swallowed and set down his fork and knife. "So you're here on business. You want to kill me."

"I want to stop you," Dean said. He felt the weight of the Colt against his ribs

Death nodded. "I don't suppose you'll take my word that killing me will change absolutely nothing?"

"You would say that, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose so. But I'll say something else, for free. Dean, you have everything you need to end this."

That was when a waitress approached, a little nervously. Her gaze skated right by the scythe and landed on Dean.

"Mr. Winchester?" she said. "Phone call for you, from a Mr. Singer. He, uh, he says you need to get in contact with someone."

As it turned out, Bobby's exact phrasing was, "Get your idjit ass back immediately. Cas called."

* * *

**II.**

* * *

Bobby had given him an address in rural Illinois. In true Winchester fashion, Cas had gotten dressed in his tan trenchcoat, and without being discharged, gotten out to meet Dean in the hospital parking lot.

"You look like you've gone ten rounds with Muhammad Ali," Dean said to cover for how painfully his heart beat in his mouth, when Cas had settled down in the passenger seat of the Impala like he belonged.

Cas, with dark circles under his eyes and bruises mottling the side of his white-as-a-sheet face, looked at Dean. And in that brief look Dean could see oceans of meaning in his blue eyes; loss, and desperate hope. He thought of the cornfield, and the moment they had looked at each other like time had stopped. He quickly turned his eyes back to the road.

"I don't understand that reference," Cas said gravely.

The grin that spread over Dean's face wasn't purposeful, it just happened. "Good to have you back, Cas."

"It's good to be back," Cas said hesitantly. "Though I am not what I once was."

Dean glanced at him again. He was breathing evenly and looked out at the road ahead, his avian profile a dark cutout against the ambient town lights that bled in through the windshield. Each time they passed a streetlight he was lit up in orange-yellow, the glow sliding over his skin like oil slicks on water. He looked as he always had, which was absolutely beautiful.

Though exactly what Cas meant became abundantly clear when they got out of the car at the motel they had to take in at, because Dean's eyes threatened to fall shut after more or less three days of incessant driving, from South Dakota to Maryland to Illinois, heading back to South Dakota. No more than three steps from the car, Cas doubled over in a coughing fit that left him panting and pale, and the ripping noise of it had Dean as awake as he had ever been.

To his horror, Dean saw something that glowed a blue-tinted white dribble out between Cas' lips and down his chin before it evaporated in the night air like a cloud of exhalation, and when Cas looked up, his eyes were glowing with the same light.

"What the hell is happening to you?" Dean said, unable to look at Cas with something other than awestruck terror. They were alone in the motel parking lot, but still the sensation of being watched creeped up Dean's spine. Maybe it was foreboding.

Cas smiled ruefully as the light faded from his eyes. "My grace," he said, and his voice was gritty with exhaustion. "I'm losing it, bit by bit. My connection to the Host is weakening every passing day, and with it, my powers."

Dean swallowed. The implications of what Cas was saying made him feel unmoored, yanking up something he'd thought was immovable and immutable. He still found himself asking, "What does it mean?"

Cas blinked at him. He did it calmly, a slow sweep of coal-black eyelashes, but Dean could see the pulse fluttering in his throat like the wings of a baby bird.

"I'm falling," Cas said. He looked away then, as if in shame, and before Dean knew what he was doing, he put his hand on Cas' arm; to brace him, or to comfort him, Dean didn't know.

"Fuck," Dean breathed. He didn't know how to look away from Cas now. "Fuck, Cas, if you're not– I mean, without your powers, how can we even hope to put a lid on this whole mess?"

Cas' eyes flicked back to his, and the black hopelessness in them were enough to make Dean turn away, finally, to press his palms against his temples and stare up at the sky. The light pollution from some nearby city obliterated any hint of the stars, turning the sky a reddish dark. He imagined it had to be reflected in his eyes, because he felt them prickle with unshed tears. The only sound in the parking lot was the faraway sound of highway traffic and the close sound of their breathing, punctuated by the faint sizzle of the neon motel sign.

He thought about what Death had said.  _ You have everything you need to end this. _

"Maybe," Dean said after a while. He paused to draw in a shaky breath. "I should say yes to Michael."

He barely registered the sound of shifting fabric and rapid footfalls on concrete, before Cas had gripped him by the lapel of his denim jacket and slammed him up against the Impala. The laboriously drawn breath left Dean in a loud whoosh as Castiel pressed in so close that the edge of the car roof dug into Dean's shoulder blades, inhuman strength holding him up on the toes of his scuffed boots.

"Don't you  _ dare, _ Dean," Cas said with cold fury. The tip of his nose was a mere half inch from Dean's, his flaming eyes were narrowed to menacing slits, and the voice came out a low growl. "Not after I rebelled against my siblings, against the Host of Heaven, for  _ you!" _

Dean, with Castiel's arm pressed across his windpipe, could feel some spit work its way out of the corner of his mouth and he could do nothing to stop it; could only grasp Cas' forearm desperately and fight to breathe. Still he managed to choke out a single syllable, rent with unspeakable agony.

_ "Why?" _

That made Cas' gaze flicker down, to catch unmistakably on Dean's mouth. To Dean's mortification, it made the blood run hot in his veins and light embers in his stomach. The arm across his throat let up the pressure, but Cas didn't. He stayed pressed against Dean, chest to groin, one hand still fisted in the lapel of Dean's jacket, over the frantic beating of Dean's heart.

"Because you said you believed in me," Cas said, the rage leaching out of his voice to give place to a more fraught emotion. "And that gave me a reason to believe in you too."

Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or the impending doom of the world ending, or just the absolute relief of finding Cas alive, but Dean trailed his hand up the lapel of Cas' trench coat in turn, a much gentler touch, and brushed his thumb against the straight line of his jaw. The dark stubble rasped against his fingerprint.

"Cas," Dean said. His voice was shot to hell, and he swallowed. He knew he wasn't reading him wrong; he saw it in his eyes, felt it in the way their bodies lined up, but he still wanted to give Cas the out. "Tell me if I'm way off base." 

Dean knew from experience that even when you read the signs right, even when you were careful, much more careful than this, the guy could get cold feet. On a good day, you'd just end up beating off on your own, but on a bad day you'd end up getting punched in the face because some guys had never heard of  _ psychological projection.  _

But Cas wasn't just some guy. Cas looked at Dean like his face held the secrets of the universe, and he accepted Dean's touch with a soundless sigh, eyelashes fanning like feathers as his gaze returned to Dean's mouth.

"Dean," he said, and there was something mournful, almost apologetic, imbued in the name.

Dean didn't think he could bear to hear what more Cas had to say in a voice like that, so he closed the remaining distance between them and pressed their mouths together in a chaste kiss.

For a moment, everything came to a standstill. The chill of the night air, the hum of the neon sign and the white noise of the highway was a blanket on Dean's senses, until Cas tilted his head just a fraction, and parted his lips. Suddenly, the rushing of Dean's pulse in his ears drowned out every other sound, and his world narrowed down to the point of contact that was the wet heat of Cas' mouth against his 

Dean bent his head to catch Cas' lower lip in between his, even though he really wanted to pry them apart and swallow Cas whole in some unreal, primal urge. He wanted to know what Cas tasted like, what it felt like for their breaths to grow ragged and their mouths slick with spit against each other, wanted to find out all the ways they could fit together.

But the night air was raising goosebumps on his forearms, below the pushed-up sleeves of his jacket, and the feeling of being watched was still prickling down his neck, so even though it felt like the hardest thing he'd ever had to do, Dean bent his head even further, pulling away from Cas' mouth to  _ breathe. _

When Dean finally found the courage to look Cas in the eye again, he found Cas looking back. His eyes were dark, and his mouth was pink, and Dean was fairly sure his blood must've turned to molten gold in his veins; that was what it felt like, to have Cas looking at him like that.

"I'm, uh," Dean said and swallowed. "I'll go get us a room."

* * *

**III.**

* * *

Dean had had some version of these events play out before. Not often, but enough times that he had a blueprint for the proceedings; pay for the room with a generous enough tip that they wouldn't mind a later checkout time, lock the motel door, make sure the blinds were closed, take off your clothes and keep quiet enough that eventual neighbors wouldn't have cause to complain.

But he paused with his hand on the buttons of his shirt. Cas was standing just inside the locked door, watching Dean quietly, and it unnerved him.

"Cas?" he said. At the name, Cas let out a shuddering breath, which made Dean brave enough to step up close, so close that he crowded him against the door. Cas didn't flinch at the proximity as Dean might have done once; he only kept looking at Dean. "What's up?"

Cas lowered his gaze, to their feet. Dean looked down too, and found their feet to be interlocked, like the teeth of a zipper. "The way I feel for you, Dean– An angel isn't supposed to love like  _ this." _

Dean swallowed. He didn't know that he could wrap his head around something so big, so he hooked a finger on the inside of the lapel of Cas' trenchcoat and slid it slowly up to the collar. "Yeah, well, a guy like me ain't supposed to love a guy like you, either."

Cas looked back up at him, with an affronted little crease between his eyebrows. "Why not? It's natural for humans to express love with their bodies."

Dean blew out a slow breath. "Then why shouldn't it be natural for you too? You have a body now, don't you?"

Before Cas could think too long about it — and Dean wanted to distract himself too from the metaphysical implications of what they were about to do — Dean kissed him again.

This time, Cas met him immediately, parting his lips without hesitation and twining his fingers in the flannel of Dean's open shirt, so that Dean's heart beat against his knuckles.

Even though it made his breath hitch embarrassingly, Dean pressed himself against Cas, slotting one leg in between his so they were flush against the locked door. He was delirious with the knowledge that if Cas wanted to he could push Dean away, but he kept choosing not to. Instead he pulled him closer, kissed him deeper, and Dean thought he wouldn't mind drowning like this.

They shifted together without letting go of each other, and Dean heard something that sounded like a seam ripping.

"Alright, alright," he mumbled against Cas' mouth and angled his body away so he could shrug out of his flannel shirt completely. Cas let go of him long enough for it, but Dean pressed back in immediately, wanting the heat of his body and understanding, for the first time, what magnetic attraction truly meant. 

Cas was still dressed in the trenchcoat, and when it started to chafe, Dean had to pull him away from the door to push it off his shoulders. With the coat pooled around his feet, Cas looked a lot smaller; the black suit he wore underneath made him seem slimmer than he was, but Dean had felt the breadth of his shoulders under his hands and knew the size and shape of him.

He stepped in close again and sifted the silky material of Cas' blue tie between his fingers and took the time to look him up and down. There was a slight flush to Cas' cheeks and his mouth was red from their kissing, and the notion made Dean's blood flow south. He closed his own mouth and swallowed audibly.

When Cas set his hand on Dean's bare arm, it sent a pleasant shock through him. The palm was warm and dry, and caressed the length of his arm from wrist to the edge of his t-shirt sleeve, his thumb tracking the line of protective runes absently. The touch made Dean pull at the tie, perhaps a little too forcefully, to undo the knot.

Cas let him slide the tie out from under his collar, and the top button of his dress shirt was already undone, making it easy for Dean to hook a finger in the opening. Meeting his gaze was difficult, so Dean kept his eyes trained on the dip of his throat instead.

"What do you want, Cas?" Dean said. His voice was rough, unrecognizable to himself.

"I know your body down to its molecules, and I still want to know it more," Cas murmured, his eyelashes casting shadows on his cheeks as he looked Dean up and down too. It was a strange thing to say, Dean knew, but everything about them was strange. More than that, it was honest, and so  _ Cas,  _ that Dean had to swallow a groan and bend his head to press his forehead to Cas' chest.

He breathed in deeply, and the scent of Cas' shirt filled his nostrils. It smelled clean, even after all he'd been through, but with an underlying note of something tangy and electric. Chypre mixed with ozone.

"I'm gonna," Dean said, and let gravity pull him down to his knees.

He heard a soft hiss of indrawn breath from above, but Dean had to focus on something more immediate. The warm bulge in the slacks in front of him, the somehow complicated undoing of the belt buckle. He slid the belt out like he had the tie, and let it clatter to the floor beside them. He undid the button and the zipper quickly, like he was afraid of changing his mind. He wasn't going to change his mind, but everything felt urgent; desperate.

But before he could pull the slacks down, he felt Cas place his hand on his head. It wasn't the usual hand on the head in these circumstances — Cas didn't thread his fingers in his hair; instead he cupped the side of his face and made him tilt his head up.

"Is this what you want, Dean?" Cas asked. His chest was heaving, and the bulge in the exposed triangle of white underwear made Dean fairly certain this was something  _ Cas  _ wanted, and his own wants had been pretty far from his mind. 

"Only if you– we don't have to," Dean said. The smell of ozone was stronger here, and his mouth was watering.

He realized Cas was stroking the side of his face with his thumb. For some reason,  _ this  _ made Dean blush, and he felt completely naked, even though neither of them were.

"I meant what I said," Cas said and looked at him intently. "I want to know your body, and you just brought it out of my reach."

"Jesus," Dean muttered and pushed away enough to get his feet under him and stand up again. "Jesus, Cas, you can't say shit like that."

But he didn't know if he wanted Cas to listen to the ban he'd uttered, so he pulled him closer by the shirt and started to unbutton it. Cas, who was a terrifyingly quick study, pulled Dean's t-shirt out of his jeans and over his head, running his warm hands over Dean's chest and waist and back, to map or to feel, Dean didn't know, but sending rivers of pleasure coursing through him all the same.

Somewhere between kicking off their shoes and pulling down their pants, they landed on one of the motel beds. The room had two, and they were narrow, but this one was pushed against the wall so Dean was fairly certain they wouldn't roll off it.

Then Cas set his mouth to the tender spot just where Dean's jaw met his throat, and all coherent thought deserted him for a while. Cas really hadn't been kidding when he said he wanted to know Dean's body; he seemed intent to explore every inch by either mouth or hand, tracing the line of a collarbone with his teeth, or raking his fingers down a bunched thigh muscle, tracing the outline of the Led Zeppelin angel tattoo, and Dean was struggling to keep afloat.

It wasn't that he'd expected Cas to be a blushing virgin, but the confidence with which he set out to reduce Dean to a trembling mess was disconcerting.

"Whoa, okay," Dean said and grabbed Cas by the ears when he kissed one of his hip bones, sliding precariously close to the lining of his boxers. He pulled Cas up on top of him and kissed him on the lips once more; that deep, intimate kissing that lit his body on fire. "You can know my body all you like, Cas, but I'm still not done with your mouth," he murmured, breathlessly, against Cas' lips.

"Please," Cas said, pressing the word into the roughened skin of Dean's jaw. "I don't know what you want."

"I don't either," Dean said, with a panicked little laugh, pushing his knee up to press Cas even closer. "Why don't we try to figure it out, huh?"

"I suppose that's what we've been doing all along," Cas said, and Dean was astonished to realize he could feel Cas smiling against his skin.

And like that, in a strange push and pull, like the moon pulling the tide, they came together. Cas kissed Dean's neck and collarbone, but never strayed far from his mouth, and Dean kissed his chest and caught his soft earlobe between teeth, and Dean was the one to push their underwear down and touch Cas for the first time. His cock was silken and burning to the touch, and though it was dry and made Dean twist his wrist uncomfortably, he didn't let up for a second, because the noises Cas spilled into his skin were so sweet and made Dean's skin feel like something precious.

For the most part, Dean kept his eyes squeezed shut, but when he opened them, the image of Cas arched above him, the tendons of his arms standing out as he braced himself, dark head hanging heavily between his shoulders and haloed by the ambient, warm light that seeped in through a crack in the blinds, etched itself into his mind like acid in brilliant copperplate.

When Cas climaxed, it was with an open but soft moan pressed into Dean's shoulder. Dean sought his mouth again, desperately, and he himself wasn't long for it after that. It took only a second, it felt like, for Cas to touch him, and the cresting wave of pleasure just about wiped him out when it crashed into shore, making him gasp for air.

When he came to, he found them tangled together in damp bedsheets, with Cas tracing the line between Dean's pectorals down to his navel and back up again. It tickled a little.

Dean tried to say something, but he had to stop and clear his throat before he could try again. "Cas, what are you doing?"

"It's so curious to me," Cas said, splaying his hand flat across Dean's rounded belly, "that something so limited as a body can experience such a wide spectrum of sensation. As you experience pain, you think nothing could possibly make it worth feeling something like that, but–" Here Cas flicked his gaze up, to meet Dean's. His cheek was resting on Dean's chest. "Just now, I thought that I would endure anything, if I could just feel like  _ that  _ again."

"You don't even know half of it," Dean said weakly, and brought the arm trapped under Cas up to gently caress his shoulder. He used his other hand to first pull the covers up over them both and then to grab the hand splayed on his stomach and bring it up to his mouth for a kiss. He then let both their hands settle on his chest, and Cas shifted his head so they lay snug together. "Speaking of sensations, I think we should go wash up soon."

"Soon," Cas agreed. "But not yet."


	11. Ramble On

**Prelude**

* * *

_ Castiel remembered being created. He remembered that first breath he took and he remembered the marvel he felt at beholding his Father’s creation for the first time. _

_ He was surrounded by brothers and sisters and they were all part of him and he was part of them and all the angels marveled together. That unity shattered, when Lucifer rebelled. And fell from grace. _

_ Castiel always wondered about that. _

_ When Dean Winchester was cast into Hell, Castiel was ordered to raise him. By then a whole hierarchy had sprung up among the angels, catalyzed by the corruption of Lucifer, and Castiel had always thought that the angels modeled their hierarchy, the garrisons and the leaders, after the humans. But he said nothing of it. _

_ He had learnt not to question orders. He did not want to fall like Lucifer because it had looked painful, losing your grace like that. _

_ Before, Castiel thought things were black and white; there were angels and then there were demons, there was obedience or there was retribution. Humanity had never really factored into it. _

_ But then, of course, Castiel had been the one angel to grip Dean tight and raise him from perdition. And Castiel didn't know it yet, but from the moment he placed his hand on Dean Winchester, he started to see color. _

* * *

**I.**

* * *

Sam met them in Bobby's yard, and surprised both Dean and Cas by sweeping Cas into a crushing hug.

"I'm so glad you're okay," Sam said, while Cas blinked at Dean over Sam's shoulder, bewildered. Dean had to hide a laugh behind his hand.

"What, no love left over for your own brother?" Dean said. He knew they were all fucked, on the grand cosmic scale, but he was still in a good mood. Sam finally let go of Cas and turned to Dean with a smile and open arms.

He looked good, color returned to his cheeks and clarity to his eyes. Hugging him felt good, reassuring, and Dean squeezed him tight for a second longer than usual.

Maybe he knew, on some level, what Sam had decided to do.

Gathered around Bobby's kitchen table, where so much had happened, Sam told them.

Dean knew he was gripping his coffee cup so hard his knuckles stood out like white ridges under his skin. The porcelain of the coffee cup was too hot under his palms but he couldn't let go. Recounting what had happened in Detroit, and what was going on with Cas, had taken long enough that Bobby had put on a pot, but it was still fresh when Sam told them that he was going to say yes to Lucifer so that Dean could kill him.

Dean had pressed his lips flat so he wouldn't interrupt and tell Sam no, because doing that was just a reflex, like kicking your foot out when someone knocked the edge of their hand into your kneecap, and Dean was better than that.

"I managed to wrest control from Yellow Eyes. I can do it with Lucifer too, just for a moment. We still have the one bullet left," Sam finished, tapping his long fingers on the tabletop. "And it's the best shot we have at killing the Devil."

"Well, I don't like it," Bobby said, sparing Dean the trouble of saying it himself. Bobby looked at him though, like he expected Dean to back him up. But Dean knew, even though he wanted to protest, that they had put the Apocalypse in motion and they had to be the ones to bring it to a grinding halt, too.

Even if it meant Sam saying yes to the Devil and dying by his brother's hand.

_ You have everything you need to end this,  _ Death had said. He'd said nothing about  _ losing  _ everything to end it, but then again, that sort of figured.

"I hate this," Dean said.

Sam nodded curtly, like he'd expected Dean to say nothing else. "I hate it too, but 'Team No Apocalypse' is running out of options here, Dean. At least this way, no one else gets hurt."

"I know," Dean said, roughly. He looked at Cas, who was regarding his coffee cup with a curiosity that tugged at something tender in Dean's heart.

"What do you say, Cas?" Sam said.

For a moment, nobody moved. Cas reminded Dean of a statue — he might as well have been carved out of marble, in that moment. He had a certain sort of classical beauty that would have been right at home in an art gallery. But then Cas lifted his chin and met Sam's concerned gaze with an equally serious look.

"It's a foolhardy plan. It requires tremendous sacrifice, and it relies on the resilience of you both." His eyes, that shifting, deep blue, somehow as eternal as the sea, fixed on Dean when he moved in his chair. "I think it could work."

Dean blew out a breath between his lips and looked down into his own cup. When he finally talked, it was haltingly. "When Sam– when he used the demon knife to kill Yellow Eyes, Sam didn't– He was alive for a little while afterwards. Cas, do you think– maybe you could use your angel mojo to heal him up, if I shoot him with the Colt?"

"I don't know Dean." When Dean looked back up at Cas, he saw his hands fall open, around the cup of coffee, helpless but hopeful. "As I am now– I don't know if my powers will be enough."

"This whole thing is a long shot," Sam said and made a face. "No pun intended. It's okay."

"No, it's fucking not!" Dean snapped, slamming his hands down flat on the table so that his cup wobbled. "If this works, we end up with you dead!"

The smile Sam leveled Dean with was sad but unwavering. "That's how it all started, too," he said, with a calm and maturity Dean could never hope to achieve. "Maybe it's like the reaper said. What's dead should stay dead."

"No," Dean said, with a finality that brokered no arguments. "That's bullshit and we'll prove it."

"I'd say godspeed to you, boys," Bobby said and pushed back his chair to lean back. "But I hear God isn't up to much these days. I guess all I can wish you is good luck."

"I think maybe I've used up all our luck, too," Dean muttered and lifted his coffee cup to his lips. It was still lukewarm, but still completely drinkable.

He watched Cas take a sip too. Then Cas lowered the cup with a thoughtful expression and said, "I do not understand why the disciple Omar, who discovered coffee, was made a saint if it tastes like _ this." _

The coffee was coming out Dean's nose as Bobby said, "Then don't drink it, you ungrateful son of a bitch!"

* * *

**II.**

* * *

It was a rare luxury to be able to set the scene for the final showdown. Still, it wasn't a scene Dean would have chosen; the cemetery seemed too peaceful, with its lush trees and untended grass. What it had going for it, though, was that it was abandoned, and left the three of them to make their preparations in peace.

"You guys get what you wanted, huh," Dean said quietly, to the deceptively blue sky. He was standing by a gravestone so old that the text on it has withered away. "The Devil waltzing around in my baby brother. Only I won't let Michael in, to use Earth as his private boxing ring. We're putting a stop to it."

Sam straightened up from where he was helping Cas. They hadn't erected a funeral pyre, but Dean had a feeling they were going to need one before the day was out.

"You say something?" Sam called.

Dean shook his head and walked over to them. The cool wind was tugging playfully at his jacket, so Dean had pushed his hands deep into the pockets.

"How we lookin'?" he asked, even though he didn't want the answer.

Sam blew out a breath. It made the lock of hair over his forehead flutter. "Good," he said. "I think we're ready."

Pride so fierce it hurt gripped Dean's heart. He looked at his little brother — four years his junior and about four feet taller than him. Well, figuratively, at least. Sam had always been the brave one. He had dared to go against their father when Dean just kept his head down, and he was the one putting his life on the line for a greater good once again.

Sam had made sure to have a future to look forward to. Dean owed it to him to help make that future happen for everyone else.

"Sam," Dean said and grabbed his arm in an intimate handshake, and made sure to look him in the eyes. "If there's anyone who can do this, it's you."

Sam's eyes, big and soulful, filled with tears, but he blinked them away resolutely. He gripped Dean's arm back.

"Thank you, Dean," he said. "Love you."

Instead of saying it back, Dean squeezed his arm once before turning away.

Cas watched all this without saying a word.

They left Sam standing there, Dean and Cas. They looked at each other, and Dean found himself grateful for Castiel's presence — for having his powers at their side, sure, but also just  _ Cas,  _ someone Dean had come to trust.

Dean saw Sam close his eyes and draw in a deep breath.

Whatever consent he gave, he gave it quietly, because when he opened his eyes again, Dean knew it wasn't Sam anymore. The sky was quickly overtaken by darkening clouds, and the wind was whipping around their ears now.

Like a dress rehearsal going off without a hitch, Cas threw a lighted match to the grass, and the circle of holy oil ignited in flames around Sam's body, and Dean drew the Colt from the holster and took aim. Sam's head tilted to the side, in a movement that for one jarring moment reminded Dean of Cas, before the smile that curled over his face obliterated any resemblance to either Cas or Sam himself.

"You think a little circle of holy oil is going to stop me?" Sam's mouth said. "Me, Lucifer Morningstar, the first of the archangels? You're insignificant."

Prince of Lies, Dean reminded himself Sam had said, before he squeezed the trigger.

Dean was a good shot. He didn't hesitate, or waver. The bullet hit Sam dead in the chest, at a close enough range that it went out the back too.

He didn't know if he should have expected the white blast of an angel dying, or the red crackle of a demon. Maybe, Dean thought, it ought to be some sort of twisted combination of both. An obliterating red flash. But none of that happened; Sam's chin tipped forward slowly as the entire world held its breath.

Then, before Dean's eyes, the bullet wound knit itself together. Sam's chin rose, and that infuriating smile returned.

"A magic bullet," Lucifer said. "Cute."

And just like that, every hope of seeing this through, of saving the world instead of destroying it, was extinguished. There was no Plan B, no cards left to play. Dean fought the urge to just close his eyes and give up. He wouldn't do that to Sam; he would damn well go out fighting. He tucked the now emptied Colt back in the holster.

Turned out the Devil hadn't been lying when he'd said holy oil wasn't going to stop him. With some power that was surely the opposite of divine, he pulled Castiel toward him and dragged him down on the ground, across the flames to make a bridge. Cas screamed in agony, and Dean started into motion though there was nothing he could do; before he could make it to Cas' side, Lucifer in Sam's body had stepped over him and grabbed Dean by the lapels of his denim jacket.

"I'm sure you had a big idea of how this was going to shake out," Lucifer said, sliding his gaze appraisingly over Dean. This close, he could sense the power humming just under the skin of this being, and Dean thought that Sam must be screaming inside. "Beat the Devil, save Sam, blah blah blah. Well, that didn't happen. You lost. And now I'm going to kill you, so you can't say yes to my brother Michael, and I will rule the Earth as I was promised."

"You always talk this much shit?" Dean said. "Get a life."

It was a strange sort of satisfaction, to goad Lucifer himself into violence. And it was a base sort of violence too; Dean was suckerpunched, hard enough that he felt his lip split.

Lucifer let go to aim a vicious kick to Dean's gut, and Dean only just managed to twist so it hit his ribs instead. Pain bloomed from the impact, but he didn't think anything had broken.

_ At least no one else gets hurt, _ Dean thought. Maybe this way, Cas could get away, if he was able. Maybe Dean could distract Lucifer enough for Sam to wrest control. With that in mind, he rolled with the next punch and landed in a crouch. He grabbed a fistful of dirt, and when Lucifer neared to attack again, Dean flung it to his face.

He might be the first of the archangels, the Devil himself, but as long as he was in Sam's body, he was affected by it, and so he spluttered and cursed and wiped at his eyes while Dean could take the chance to straighten up and catch his breath. The skies opened up to pour down rain.

Dean had to wipe water out of his eyes to look at Cas. He lay in the grass, half a foot away from the broken circle of flame. As Dean watched, the flames sputtered and went out, but Cas didn't move. He looked peaceful, and the only ugly thing about his shape was the black scorch mark across his tan trenchcoat.

Dean wondered if he was dead; if he would decompose, or if the inherent divinity of angels would preserve the body.

He didn't have time to reflect for long; Lucifer had burned the dirt from his eyes and came for him, hell bent on retribution. Dean put his arms up in defense, but the thought running through his head as he was beaten to pulp was,  _ Don't put up a fight. That's Sammy you're hurting.  _ The rain made everything heavier, the sounds of their feet on the ground turning to squelches. Dean didn't know if he heard thunder, or if it was just his head ringing with the onslaught.

"It's okay, Sammy," Dean said, through a mouthful of blood, as Lucifer gripped him by the collar of his jacket again, to lift him up. "I'm here. 'M not going anywhere."

Dean didn't know if it was his imagination, or if  _ Sam  _ appeared for just a second. A softening around the eyes, a glimmer in them — and the hand gripping Dean's jacket opened.

It had been the only thing keeping him standing, and Dean slumped to his knees. He could taste iron in the back of his mouth and his head was spinning, but he had Cas within arm's reach, so he reached out an arm and touched him.

"Cas?" he said, though it was slurred. And Cas moved under his hand, a small but unmistakable shift. He had rolled away from the holy fire, but there was a charred line across his trenchcoat, and Dean felt his throat close up when Cas' eyes blinked open to look at him.

Dean figured there was nothing he could say, so he hoped he could convey it with his eyes, or with the weak squeeze of his fingers. Castiel was so warm, and Dean wished he could hug him one last time. Cas blinked, and Dean imagined he understood everything he wanted to say. Everything, except what he actually said when he opened his mouth.

"I'm sorry," Cas said. "It was never going to work."

_ Why did you come with us then?  _ Dean wanted to ask. But every other noise was drowned out by a thunderclap, and Cas tore his gaze away from Dean and heaved himself up on all fours, and then, laboriously, onto his two feet. Dean recognized the set of his jaw; Castiel was going to give the Devil a run for his money and no mistake. Dean felt his heart give a little flutter of pride — Cas was going to go out fighting too. The rain was sluicing off his coat in great rivers.

Lucifer paused in surprise that Castiel was walking and talking at all. Cas spat on the ground before him.

"You were the first to choose your own path, but you chose one of destruction," Cas said, unflinchingly. "That makes you weak."

Dean saw Lucifer move in for the kill, wild with chilling fury, but Cas countered with what looked like a classical wrestler's grip. Dean could sense their wings flare out, that great shift of the air and hum of power that made the skin on his arms rise in goosebumps, and then there was a blinding flash of light that had Dean covering his eyes, but left red imprints behind even so.

When he could blink his eyes open again, he saw both Sam and Cas lie in the grass, absolutely still. The taste in his mouth turned sour, but still Dean crawled over to them, in the now drizzling rain, lacking the strength or willpower to get up.

He reached Sam first, and he touched his face. He didn't expect to find signs of life but he  _ did;  _ a pulse was fluttering just under his jaw. Even less he expected Sam's eyes to fly open and his mouth part over a loud inhale as he surged upright.

"Oh, whoa!" Dean said, no doubt spattering more blood down the front of his shirt. Sam was panting, and it took a second for his gaze to focus on Dean.

"Dean," Sam said at last and grabbed his jacket. The hold was so different from the way Lucifer had gripped it. "Dean what– Cas fought him– I felt Cas just  _ rip  _ him out of me!"

They both turned their heads to find Castiel, lying still in the grass. Sam let go of Dean, and Dean heaved himself over to him, not daring to hope.

Cas was still; the body was still. No breath stirred his chest, no pulse fluttered beneath his jaw. The unfairness of it, that it had happened with so little to mark it, stole the breath out of Dean's lungs. But he supposed it was as T. S. Eliot had promised the world would end. _ Not with a bang but with a whimper.  _

Dean felt the hot sting of tears in his eyes as he gathered up a handful of trenchcoat and just squeezed; he wanted to scream. Of course he wouldn't be allowed this.

"Goddammit, Cas," he whispered. "Goddammit."

Because he didn't know what to say and because it was too late for words anyway, he bent down and pressed his lips to Cas' forehead. The skin was cold and wet with rain, and Dean felt his unshed tears clump his eyelashes together.

Dean had no reason to expect a miracle. It was true; they'd defied odds several times, but miracles? Those didn't really happen. Except that under Dean's clenched hand, Castiel's chest suddenly moved. It shocked Dean enough that he lifted his hand, and he watched, dumbfounded and awestruck as Cas opened his eyes. His breathing was pained and ragged, but it was  _ breathing,  _ and Dean felt the tears finally spill down his cheeks. The rain had stopped but the sky was still overcast, and yet Dean felt like he'd seen the sun again.

"Cas?" he said quietly, through the tears. Cas blinked, and his eyes shifted to meet Dean's.

"Dean?" Cas said. It was his voice, low and grainy, and it was the best sound Dean had ever heard. "Am I alive?"

"I hope so, buddy," Dean said, and he was smiling through the tears now. "I mean, sure looks like it."

Cas had the audacity to frown. "It shouldn't be possible — my grace. It's gone. I used it to trap Lucifer–"

Cas tried to sit up, but he couldn't quite manage. He had to grip Dean's arm, and Dean hurried to support him with a hand on his back and another cupping his neck.

"Easy there. How are you feeling?" Dean said. His voice was reedy, breathless with relief, and he couldn't stop looking Cas over. The only visible injury was the scorch mark across his trenchcoat, but it didn't seem to have burned through. Cas kept frowning as he looked around.

"Weak," he said. "I feel– I feel both more and less than before." His eyes shifted back to Dean and he gulped in a breath that sounded almost panicky. "I have no connection to the Host anymore. I feel lonely."

"You're not though," Dean said and shifted his hand so he cupped the back of Cas' head, felt his soft hair against his palm. "You have us now, Cas. You're not alone."

And then, to prove it, Dean pressed his lips to the corner of Cas' mouth, heedless of his own injuries, or the blood that he had to be smearing all over him. The wind ruffled his hair playfully, and the clouds had broken up to show blue sky again. There was a flicker of a rainbow on the horizon, and Dean dared to feel happy.

* * *

**III.**

* * *

"So you mean to tell me," Bobby said slowly, eyeing the three of them where they sat, somewhat sheepishly, back at his kitchen table around the remains of Karen's cherry pie, "that Chuckles over here knew all along the Colt was going to do just about as much as a fart in the desert, and he went along with it just to be able to throw himself at the Devil?"

"I thought the cost of trapping Lucifer would be my life," Cas said with a nod. Dean's heart squeezed, which was stupid, because Cas was  _ alive,  _ right here, in front of him. "I'm not certain why it wasn't."

"You certainly learnt something about self-sacrifice from idjit one and two over here," Bobby said with a nod to Sam and Dean. Sam bowed his head, chastised, and Dean felt his own ears redden. He plucked at the bandage around his knuckles.

"You better quit it," he told Cas, gruffly.

Cas looked back, not in the least bit cowed. "Only if you quit it first."

Sam let out a cough that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Dean glared at him, but Sam only looked back at him with innocently sparkling eyes.

"I have to think," Cas said then, slowly, "that I survived because my grace was no longer all that I am. This body– this body is me, and I am this body, even without my grace. Especially without my grace." He kept flexing his hands; curling the fingers into loose fists and then unfurling them again. Dean kind of wanted to reach out and hold one of them.

"So the Devil is back in the Cage, and you're all somehow alive," Bobby mused and sat back. "Apocalypse averted. What now?"

"The rest of our lives, I suppose," Sam said with a shrug. "Whatever we want."

Dean realized there was nothing to stop him from holding Cas' hand. Sam had already seen them kiss, and there was no hiding anything from Bobby, either. He reached out and grabbed it. Cas turned his palm and laced their fingers together without looking at Dean, like he didn't even have to think about it. It made something tremble in Dean's chest.

"I guess getting back to salting and burning bones will be a nice change of pace," Bobby said and scratched his graying beard. Dean was fairly sure he'd noticed the hand-holding but decided not to mention it.

"Actually, I was thinking of going back to Stanford," Sam said and pulled a hand through his hair. "I mean, I'll probably never stop looking through the newspapers for cases, but– But hunters get into legal trouble quite easily. I think it'd be good for me to have that law degree."

"Hell yeah!" Dean said and clapped his free hand on Sam's shoulder. Sam smiled, shyly. "You go, Sammy, that's awesome!"

"What about you?" Sam asked. Dean squeezed Cas' hand involuntarily.

"Well, I was thinking, with Jo going off on her own, Ellen could maybe use some help down at the Roadhouse," he said and looked down at his hand in Cas'. "I mean, I'm not hanging up the spurs or anything, but I think Cas maybe needs some time to get his bearings."

"I don't need to be taken care of," Cas said, with an edge to his voice. Dean looked up at him, astonished.

"'Course you don't  _ need  _ to be taken care of," he said, just as sharply. "I just want to."

The silence that fell at his proclamation didn't last long; Sam cleared his throat, and Bobby downed the last of his whiskey before he scooted his chair back with a loud screech of floorboards to stand up.

"Well, that's good enough for  _ me,"  _ Bobby said. "You don't gotta make a whole five-year plan about it. G'night, see you boys tomorrow."

"I'm gonna head too," Sam said and scooted his chair back as well. He paused in the doorway just long enough to say, "And you guys better  _ not  _ sleep in the room next to mine."

Dean felt the blush creep up his neck to stain his cheek, but he stayed resolutely put. Cas kept holding his hand, like it was nothing, and he looked to Dean with puzzlement in his eyes.

"What's the matter with the lodgings next to Sam's?" he asked.

Dean cleared his throat. "He thinks, uh, that. That, uh, we're going to be loud. In bed. Together."

"In a house like this, I'm afraid it doesn't matter what room we're in," Cas said.

He said it so seriously that Dean burst out laughing, and he kept laughing all the way up the stairs, with Cas trailing behind him with a smile on his lips.


	12. Epilogue

**1989**

* * *

Cas was a morning person. He hadn't known people were divided into categories based on what time of day they liked to be active, but Cas liked getting up when everything was still and quiet in their little apartment above the bar. Dean  _ wasn't  _ a morning person, and Cas was reminded of this fact when he swung his legs over the side of the bed and heard Dean stir beside him with a drawn-out groan.

"Where're you goin'?" he heard Dean mumble. Cas reached out and ran a palm down his arm where it stuck out from under the covers, over the many tattoos that adorned his skin.

"To make breakfast," Cas said, which was probably the only reason Dean let him go.

Being a man of his word — for a given value of "man" — Cas got up and walked into their small kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. The drink had, as Dean had once promised, grown on him, and he now looked forward to drinking it every morning. Preparing it was a ritual, and Cas, despite everything, cherished a ritual.

A ritual was an anchor in a life that was both much more chaotic and so much smaller than Cas was used to. The slow drip of the coffee and the hum of the machine was soothing, the anticipation and knowable outcome gratifying.

He looked out the window as he waited, over the slate roofs of the buildings around them, interspersed by lush trees in the height of summer. Living in a small town had its ups and downs, Cas had discovered. People knew him by name, and Colleen down at the diner knew his order by heart (a large coffee with milk, no sugar, and a slice of cherry pie for Dean. How's Dean doing, by the way? I've tried asking him, but that boy clams up worse than a shell as soon as I get anything close to personal).

But then there had been a gang of guys that had taken affront to the fact two men were running the local watering hole and living together above it. They had showed up one night, armed with bricks and managed to do in one of the windows, but Dean had grabbed the baseball bat he kept under the bar disk, next to the shotgun, and sent them on their way. Cas memorized their faces, and when a couple of them tried to slink in to get a beer a few days later, Cas told them how small their lives were and sent them on their way again, without needing the baseball bat.

The shrill ring of their phone sliced through the air and startled Cas out of his reverie. But Dean picked it up in the bedroom, and the indistinct sound of his voice through the wall made Cas settle down, reassured that if it was important, Dean would tell him later. There was very little they didn't tell each other, and this small fact gave Cas a particular sense of peace.

Cas might not be an angel anymore, but he wasn't fully human either, and that was maybe why he could sense the air in the kitchen shift; a metaphysical cloud gliding across the morning sun shining in through the window.

"Never thought I'd find you like this," Tessa said, leaning her hip on the kitchen table with her arms crossed. Cas had only a passing understanding of what was considered fashion, but she looked very neat in her dark blue jeans and brown sweater under a blazer. Cas mostly dressed in comfortable slacks and button up shirts, because he could keep the topmost button undone, but since he'd just rolled out of bed just now he was in his underwear and one of Dean's old t-shirts.  _ Judas Priest,  _ the text on it read. Dean's idea of a joke, Cas thought. 

"Likewise," Cas said, gazing steadily at her. "I don't mean to be rude, but what are you doing here?"

Tessa smiled, a crooked little smile under her shining, pale eyes. "You sought me out once, to lead you to Dean Winchester's dreams," she said. "You owe me a favor."

Something cold ran down Cas' spine at her words. "You must know I haven't much to offer you as I am now," he said.

"I'll settle for a promise."

"A promise of what?"

Tessa's eyes flashed. "Dean died instead of Sam, which kept the balance. But you messed with that balance when you brought Dean back from the dead. That's a death undone, and the universe does not like that."

"If you're here for Dean, I will fight you," Cas said. He knew very well that he would lose, but he would still fight.

Tessa held up a hand. "Promise that when Dean's time is up, you'll let him go."

Cas looked down at his hands. They were his own now, with calluses brought on by work he had done. There was a small, silver scar across the second knuckle of his left index finger where he'd cut himself chopping shallots last fall.

"What if," he said slowly, "I could restore the balance?"

Tessa didn't uncross her arms, but she shifted. "And how would you do that?"

"A death undone," Cas said. "But I'm mortal now, and I will die one day. When it's Dean's time, you reap me too, and the universe will have its balance of deaths."

"Dean could die tomorrow, slip in the shower and hit his head," Tessa said. "You know how frail humans are. And you have no idea what will happen to you after you die."

"No," Cas agreed. The coffee machine gave a final sputter, to signal it was finished. He smiled. "But I can live with that."

Tessa straightened up and did uncross her arms. "Deal," she said, and the sunshine returned in full force with her disappearance.

Cas took a moment to look out the window again. The people were waking up; he could see movement on the streets, and the noise level was rising. This town in the middle of Kansas wasn't far from where Missouri Moseley lived; the first time Cas had met her, she had taken one look at him and burst into tears. It was tears of happiness, she explained to a horrified Dean and a shocked Cas, because as a faithful Christian, it was nice to see proof of goodness sometimes.  _ You can see goodness in the eyes,  _ Missouri had said, smiling through her tears. Cas had nodded understandingly.

Dean wasn't a morning person, but Cas knew he didn't like to sleep in for too long either, so he took a mug from the cupboard and filled it with coffee from the pot and carried it to their bedroom.

He pushed the door open, to find that Dean had kicked the covers down enough to expose his naked shoulder and the long slope of his back, one arm hanging off the side of the bed, close to the phone on his nightstand.

"Good morning, Dean," Cas said. Dean rolled around, bringing the covers with him, and fixed him with a bleary look.

"Is that coffee?" he asked, visibly perking up even though his voice was still sleep-rough. Cas smiled and sat down on the bedside to give it to him. Dean pushed himself up and grabbed it eagerly and took a gulp, apparently impervious to the still-scalding heat of it. "Oh, you're a wonder, Cas," he said, still with his eyes closed, and wound his free arm around Cas' midriff.

He took another sip before he set the mug down on the nightstand on Cas' side and pressed his lips against Cas' neck instead; lips that were too-warm from the coffee. It wasn't why Cas had brought him the drink, but Cas had learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth and melted into the touch.

"You said you wanted to take a look at the wiring before we opened today," Cas said, tilting his head back. The neon sign above their door, which read simply "Bar&Pub" even though most knew the place as  _ Winchester's, _ flickered, and the P had been dark for as long as they had owned the place.

"Mmm," Dean said and kissed Cas just behind the ear, at the joint of his jaw. "We own the place, we can open late."

"Do you know what time the delivery is going to– Dean!"

A hand had snaked down Cas' stomach and squeezed between his legs. He knew it was playful — if Cas repeated his admonishment;  _ Dean  _ — and turned away, Dean would let him go, smile at him, and drink the rest of his coffee before they went on with their day.

But maybe Cas wanted to play too.

So he turned and caught Dean's wrist. He felt Dean twist, but before he could gather any leverage, Cas gripped him under his armpit and wrestled him down on the bed, pinning him with his own body.

Dean was laughing as his back hit the bed, and when he smiled up at Cas, his beautiful, moss green eyes became lined with crows' feet. Cas touched the wrinkles lightly, marveling that emotions could leave physical imprints. He never tired of touching Dean, even after all this time with easy access to all that was his body.

Dean was touching him in turn, slowly and exploringly, his hand warm and broad on Cas' flank under the t-shirt. "Good morning to you too," he mumbled and shifted a little, just to bring Cas' attention to the heavy press of Dean's cock against his hip. His own pulsed with a slow kind of heat, responding to the proximity and the warm intent in Dean's eyes.

The thing with sex that Cas hadn't understood before was that it was different every time. Oh, the acts could be the same, but the whole of it was never the same. Never before had Cas felt this particular, lazy pleasure, of Dean being warm and pliant from sleep and pushing up to meet him, with the sun slanting in through the window at this particular angle on this particular summer's morning. And he never would again.

When Cas pressed his mouth to Dean's, he parted his lips obligingly. His breath was stale under the taste of coffee, but it came alive with kissing, and the taste of  _ Dean  _ was soon thick on Cas' tongue when he delved deeper. Dean's lips were soft and full, a shape that Renaissance sculptors would envy, and Cas knew that rasping his own stubbled top lip over them would leave them red and swollen. But he still slid his body down a fraction, to kiss the vulnerable skin of Dean's throat.

Dean sighed, a sound from deep in his chest that was both lustful and content. Cas kissed his breastbone, as if chasing the sound itself, and used the weight of his body to press as close as he could. His hand traveled down Dean's ribs and soft stomach, over the sharp jut of his hipbone to the smooth, corded muscle of his thigh and to the coarse hair on his calves.

"That tickles." Dean pushed up on his elbows and when Cas looked at him, he said, "Fuck me?"

He didn't quite look Cas in the eyes as he said it. Instead he kept his eyes downcast, and his beautiful lips were pushed into a sideways pout.

Cas didn't respond immediately. Instead he kissed Dean's breastbone again, and his clavicle and his jaw. His three-day stubble was beginning to soften into a full beard, and the texture was pleasant against Cas' lips. He knew that for Dean, this wasn't easy for him to ask even if it was the easiest thing in the world for Cas to acquiesce.

"Yes," Cas said at last and kissed him on the mouth again.

As the sun climbed higher, casting them in golden warmth, Cas opened Dean up with deft fingers, kissing every aborted sound out of his mouth. A strip of sunlight fell across them both when Cas mounted, and it shifted over Dean's body with every thrust. When it reached his face, it highlighted each freckle dusted over his crooked nose and colored his eyes a deep hazel, lined with the russet of his eyelashes.

Their breathing, though ragged, was in tandem, and everywhere they touched they were joined by sweat. Cas was so entranced by the heat of Dean's body, the intensity of his gaze, that his orgasm, when it came, welled over him as a surprise. Cas' breath stuttered, just like his hips, and he exhaled with the release.

Dean made a soft noise in his throat, and Cas lifted himself up on one arm. The movement pushed Dean up as well, and Cas opened his eyes to the searching look in Dean's.

"You feel so good," Cas said truthfully, and gently enclosed the hot, hard length of Dean in his hand. Dean's exhale shuddered, and Cas saw a muscle jump in his jaw. Sweat and precome made his grip slippery, but Cas kept his eyes fixed on Dean's face. He saw his eyes close, his brow furrowing as if in pain but his lips parting as if in pleasure, and with the final release his expression slackened into something like peace.

_ La petite mort  _ it was called, this post-orgasmic unconsciousness, the little death of them lying absolutely still, entwined in damp sheets. Waking up from it was a privilege that Cas did not intend to squander. He pressed his nose into the crook of Dean's neck and inhaled deeply, while Dean shifted gingerly to unstick some of their skin from each other.

"Sam called," Dean said, shifting again to look at Cas, as much as he could in such close quarters. His breathing was still a little labored.

"It's quite early on the West Coast," Cas said, mildly, and traced a mindless pattern on Dean's chest with his thumb.

Dean shook his head ruefully, dislodging Cas. "He never went to sleep, if you ask me. I think he's got wind of a case, but he wouldn't say. But he asked us if we want to take a trip out west and go see him."

Cas rolled over on his back, head comfortably leaned on Dean's arm. He thought about going west, into the setting sun. He thought he'd like to watch the sea, maybe feel the waves touch his toes. Dean sometimes made fun of how often he was barefoot, but Cas liked being barefoot, and Dean didn't mind that he sometimes tracked in dirt when he'd been tending their little backyard garden.

"I think we should go," Cas said and turned his head to look at him. Dean smiled, and it made his face glow.

When Cas had been an angel, he could see the souls of the people in his path. Now he could only see their faces, a dull, two-dimensional representation of their being. But sometimes, when Dean smiled just like this, with his green eyes alight, Cas thought he could glimpse his soul, and he couldn't find it in himself to regret anything.

"Great!" Dean said and clapped Cas on the shoulder before he let his palm slide down his arm in a caress. "I'll go pack the car."

* * *

**The End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feels only right I should ring in the finale of the Supernatural series, a bedrock for my fandom participation, with the most scathing criticism AND highest form of praise I can articulate; a complete revision of the entire story. ((Supernatural has been living in my head rent free for the past 10 years and this is my eviction notice))
> 
> If you liked this, I'd love it if you left a comment! And definitely go leave the kudos equivalent of feedback on the artist's work!


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